Annual Report 2003-04

Summary

In 2003-04, the Division of Information Technology supported the priorities of UW-Madison’s campus strategic plan by continuing to make significant progress on strategic goals and other key initiatives specific to information technology. Helping the University community achieve its research and learning goals, DoIT moved forward on a number of ongoing strategic initiatives, including the 21st Century Network Upgrade project, Security and Disaster Prevention Planning, Learn@UW course management system support, and the My UW-Madison portal collaboration. As a result, the UW-Madison campus has a stronger, more robust network infrastructure, offering increasingly reliable access to data and information, Web-based services, and instructional technologies. DoIT continues to improve email delivery, to enhance the quality of its technical support, and to develop mission-critical administrative and academic applications for our own campus, for the entire UW System, and for the State of Wisconsin.

The 21st Century Network Upgrade: In FY 2003-04, all departments on the UW-Madison campus were connected to the newly deployed 10-gigabit network backbone, the upgrading of the network electronics in campus buildings progressed as planned, and DoIT developed network monitoring tools that would make it possible for network administrators across campus to coordinate their troubleshooting activities. Work also began on the 10-gigabit network connection from the UW-Madison campus to the advanced national research networks in the Chicago area and beyond. This will provide the high-speed connectivity necessary to ensure that UW-Madison maintains its leadership position in key national and international research collaborations.
Disaster Avoidance Planning Project: To protect against data loss due to disasters and outages, a new campus location was identified as the alternative live site where all key campus applications that are run out of the DoIT Data Center will be backed up or “mirrored.”
Learn@UW: In Fall 2003, DoIT successfully launched its Learn@UW course management service, which allows instructors to use the Web to offer their course materials, quiz students and track grades. DoIT provides Learn@UW course implementation, hosting, and local support for UW-Madison, while also providing centralized support and hosting services for all other campuses in the UW System. This past year, 335 newly created Learn@UW courses were implemented by DoIT, and an additional 900 UW-Madison courses will be converted from WebCT to Learn@UW for use in the Fall 2004 semester. Most WebCT usage on campus will end by September 2004.
Email Delivery: This year, a highly effective “opt-in” junk email filtering service was introduced to help address the growing assault of spam. The amount of campus email has more than doubled in the past six months, however, and has reached peaks of 3.1 million messages per day, 60% of which is spam and virus-related. Among a number of other initiatives aimed at eliminating junk email, DoIT will fend off the spam assault by changing its “opt-in” filtering service to an “opt-out” approach so that more campus users will have their mail filtered by default.
My UW-Madison Portal: DoIT continues to collaborate with campus-wide advisory groups to enable convenient, round-the-clock, Web-based access to campus services and information through the My UW-Madison portal. This year, online availability of My UW-Madison exceeded operational goals at 99.95%, and detailed plans were made for integrating the existing functionality of My UW-Madison with the newly selected second-generation portal infrastructure, the open source product known as uPortal.
Wisconsin Public Health Infrastructure Network (WI-PHIN): DoIT plays a key role in this ongoing network infrastructure revitalization program. Over the last year, DoIT developed and released the latest version of the “Health Alert Network” (HAN) portal and a new broadcast messaging system. In addition, DoIT began work on a cornerstone of this revitalized public health infrastructure – the state’s implementation of the national disease surveillance system.

Finally, DoIt has achieved great success this year in its efforts to promote diversity and improve campus climate. In January 2004, the National Association of College and University Business Officers recognized DoIT as a leader in areas of Web accessibility policy development and increased access to the Web. In spring 2004, DoIT’s Information Technology Academy program, which prepares high school students from underrepresented demographic groups in the Madison area for competitive university admissions, graduated its inaugural cohort of students. All ITA graduates will attend two-year and four-year post-secondary institutions, and eight of our ITA students received a full tuition scholarship to attend UW-Madison.

Section 1: Major Accomplishments

The following summarizes DoIT’s major activities and accomplishments in support of UW-Madison’s strategic directions.

21st Century Network Upgrade and Services

The 21st Century Network upgrade significantly increases the speed, reliability, and security of the network infrastructure that supports research and learning on campus. For students, the next-generation campus network opens increased opportunities for interaction with researchers across campus as they solve cutting-edge problems and generate breakthroughs. A high-performance computing and communications infrastructure is becoming more critical to accomplishing world-class research, testing research, and taking advantage of the results of this process, activities which are likely to have a strong impact on the state economy. This 21st Century Network Upgrade will ensure that our campus researchers continue to have high-speed access to global resources and remain competitive for federal research funding well into the future.

In 2003-04, the 21st Century Network Upgrade project has progressed as planned. At this point, the new gigabit backbone is complete, following the State-managed installation of several inter-building fiber optics. The departmental “local area networks” across campus have all been migrated from the old campus network to the new backbone. This successful LAN migration allowed Network Services to decommission the old “legacy” equipment and reduce support efforts. In addition, the computer production platform’s 495 network connections were migrated to the new backbone.

DoIT is now deploying new network electronics in all the campus buildings. As part of the process, each telecommunication room housing network electronics must be upgraded with rack space, electrical service and cooling capacity. Approximately 30% of the telecommunications rooms have been upgraded, and 7% of the network electronics have been installed in the planned buildings. The project is proceeding with a target of deploying all network electronics by June 2006.

The network electronics upgrade is only part of the effort to increase the network capacity. The project will update data wiring within buildings to provide a minimum of 100-Mbps capacity to the user. These wiring upgrade projects are extensive and require a great deal of State involvement. Since it is estimated that the campus will require additional capacity in the next few years, DoIT recently obtained approval from the State to move forward with upgrading the wiring in 26 large buildings as well as installing 80 additional fiber optic runs.

Wisconsin Advanced Internet Lab (WAIL)
Concurrent with the 21st Century Network Upgrade project was the creation of the Wisconsin Advanced Internet Lab (WAIL) operated by the UW-Madison Computer Science Department as a one-of-the-kind facility for conducting network and distributed systems research. DoIT staff has continued to provide network engineering and network measurement expertise to support the work of WAIL.

Virtual Private Network (VPN)
WiscVPN is DoIT’s new virtual private network service that allows UW-Madison faculty, staff and students to connect to campus network resources while they are at home or traveling. Since its deployment in late spring 2003, hundreds of users have downloaded the WiscVPN desktop client software from the DoIT Web site. They have employed the software to open temporary, secure “tunnels” across the public Internet to the University’s private network. The WiscVPN service also permits the implementation of permanent (rather than temporary) connections between remote locations and the campus network. Permanent connections of this kind between remote local area networks and the campus network ensure that off-campus University departments have a secure means of sharing sensitive files with their on-campus colleagues. They are also an advantage to individual campus system administrators, 320 of whom have reserved secure network “addresses” that give them permanent “tunnels” across the Internet to the campus network.

Digital Academic Television Network (DATN)
This past year, DoIT piloted a free video transmission service to demonstrate the enhanced capabilities of the 21st Century Network upgrade. Through the Digital Academic Television Network (DATN) service, UW-Madison faculty, instructional staff, students, and administrators will be able to use their campus computer workstations to watch UW-Madison-produced documentaries, faculty lectures, dance and music recitals, research symposiums, and other campus-generated research and instructional programming. As a result of this year’s successful pilot, a limited number of departments on campus now have access to the DATN pilot and can view closed captioned, televised cable and satellite programming at their workstations. Users across campus will be able to access the DATN service as soon as the buildings in which they work have been migrated to the new campus backbone and the necessary electronic equipment is installed.

Advanced Network and Services Monitoring
In the first phase of the 21st Century Network Upgrade project, the new 10-gigabit network backbone was deployed across campus. Over the past eight months, DoIT has connected all departments on campus to this new backbone. As we enter the second phase of the project, involving upgrades to the local networks that will enable individual campus units to take full advantage of this new backbone, it is critical that we have a way of coordinating the network monitoring activities of departmental network administrators with the network administration of the campus backbone. This year, DoIT developed a Web-based set of tools to allow departmental network administrators (“Authorized Agents”) to continue to configure, monitor and troubleshoot network equipment on the 21st Century Network. This “Authorized Agent Network Tools Suite” (AANTS) supports a reliable network while enabling departments to retain as much local control of network configuration as possible.

Complementing our own Authorized Agent Network Tools Suite, DoIT is now using Hewlett-Packard’s OpenView networking and systems monitoring package to monitor WiscNet and all the installed components of the 21st Century Network in order to detect and correct problems before they reach critical failure levels. Using HP OpenView, our Network Operations Center (NOC) is also able to detect slowdowns in Web site and mail system service and to monitor the performance of complex Web-based services such as the My UW-Madison portal.
Disaster Avoidance Planning and Security

DoIT continues to make strides to improve the campus’s ability to protect data, detect and/or prevent security breaches, and recover from possible disasters and power outages. DoIT works closely with University Police in the development of a campus-wide crisis response plan to protect electronic assets and ensure that business processes continue should a disaster occur. And as a member of UW-Madison's Physical Security/Access Systems Policy Committee, DoIT contributes to risk assessment concerning building access and the planning and implementation of campus-wide access control systems. In addition, DoIT continues to provide consulting services to help implement federally mandated cyber-security requirements, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Bioterrorism Task Force.

Disaster Recovery and Avoidance Planning
The DoIT Data Center provides academic and administrative units with a live 24X7 location for storing their information technology infrastructure. Central to the new DoIT Disaster Recovery and Avoidance Plan, approved by the Legislative Audit Bureau in May 2003, is the concept of mirroring, in which key campus applications and services run in parallel in both the primary live location and in an alternate live location, which will serve as a back-up for major operations disaster recovery.

DoIT is making progress on the initiative to back up critical campus applications by mirroring them at a secondary live location. In the past year, we learned that plans for the demolition of our designated alternative live site were to be accelerated significantly, which disrupted our intended timeline. In late fall 2004, a new location for the secondary live site was determined, and preparations to ready this site are now underway. Still to be completed is a thorough analysis of the substantial network upgrades that will be necessary. By the end of September 2004, a campus partner is expected to make space available for our redundant equipment. Our current target is to have the first of our mirrored systems in place at the new secondary live location by June 2005.

Enterprise Storage Capabilities
DoIT continued to increase its enterprise storage capacity, which more than doubled over the past year. We also converted more than 60 servers from IBM Enterprise Storage systems to the higher performing and more cost-effective EMC Clarion systems, and acquired an additional 20 servers.

Junk Email Filtering and Spam Detection
The “opt-in” junk email filtering that was introduced to help address the growing assault of spam has been effective. Email quantities have more than doubled in the last six months, however, and DoIT will fend off the spam assault by instituting a number of new planned responses (see Section 2 for a description of spam detection and filtering goals for the coming year).

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
DoIT continues to be very active in the Chancellor’s HIPAA Privacy Task Force and its subcommittees, working with campus staff on the legally required security measures necessary to support HIPAA compliance. DoIT staff members also led a subcommittee on Risk Assessment and drafted a risk assessment tool that campus Health Care Component (HCC) units used to evaluate their compliance with the security rules. The HCC units then used the results of that risk assessment to prepare migration plans. The tool has received national attention and can be found at http://wiscinfo.doit.wisc.edu/policy/HIPAA.

Bioterrorism Task Force (BTF)
DoIT continues to support and serve on the Bioterrorism Task Force (BTF). In 2003, DoIT provided general consulting services to help implement cybersecurity requirements. In addition, DoIT staff helped compose the “Cybersecurity” section of the “Biosecurity and Containment Plan for USDA/APHIS Registered Labs at the University of Wisconsin Madison” (AGR03-0040). Finally, DoIT helped implement an automated incident response system, known as CommandCaller, within the Public Health Information Network (PHIN).

Lockdown Security Conference
The popular “Lockdown 2003” two-day conference was held this past July. Participants from UW-Madison, other UW System institutions, Wisconsin state government, and additional Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) institutions from across the Midwest attended presentations on risk assessment, legal issues, scanning, and encryption.
Technologies for Learning and Teaching

Learn@UW

In fall 2003, UW-Madison launched its Learn@UW course management service, which allows instructors to use the Web to offer their course materials, quiz students and track grades. DoIT provides Learn@UW course implementation, hosting, and local support for UW-Madison, while also providing centralized support and hosting services for all other campuses in the UW System.

In preparation for the fall 2003 launch date, DoIT staff tested and implemented several major releases of Desire2Learn (D2L), the commercial software underlying the Learn@UW service. DoIT staff then coordinated the conversion of UW System courses from WebCT and Blackboard systems to Learn@UW. To ensure that Learn@UW courses gave users proper access to course rosters and information, DoIT integrated the new course management software with each campus’s existing student information system and with the shared UW System authentication service. Finally, DoIT developed procedures and resources to provide high-volume, centralized second-level support to participating UW System institutions, augmenting local campus support services.

In fall 2003, DoIT successfully launched the Learn@UW service at Madison as planned, implementing 85 newly created D2L courses. For the Spring 2004 semester, faculty created 250 new Learn@UW courses with DoIT’s support. In summer 2004, 900 courses will be converted from the former WebCT service to Learn@UW (D2L software), and the WebCT service for the UW-Madison campus will end.
Web-based Services

My UW-Madison (MUM) Portal
DoIT continues to enable convenient, round-the-clock, Web-based access to campus services and information. The My UW-Madison (MUM) portal makes it easy for students, faculty, and staff to find University information meeting their specific needs. Information about members of the campus community is stored in many different databases at UW-Madison, including student information, employee information, course information, alumni information, library information, parking information, calendaring and scheduling software, and so on. The role of the My UW-Madison (MUM) portal is to put a consistent “face” on this information so that visitors do not have to deal with dozens of different Web interfaces to get information relevant to them. Once a visitor identifies himself or herself to the portal, My UW-Madison (MUM) gathers together all the information relevant to that person and displays it in one place. Thus, My UW-Madison (MUM) provides students, faculty and staff with an easy-to-use, personalized, secure gateway to online information.

This year’s operational goal for My UW-Madison (MUM) was to increase the online availability of the portal. This goal was met and exceeded. Over the past 12 months, the portal was available 99.95% of the time.

To ensure that My UW-Madison offers the resources the campus community requires, DoIT staff continues to collaborate with a cross-functional, campus-wide advisory group. Over the past year, the My UW-Madison Advisory Group and the DoIT core technical team hosted a series of listening sessions where faculty and staff from across the campus offered feedback regarding desired changes and improvements to the portal. This information will be used to analyze future requirements and improve performance.

This past year, the My UW-Madison Advisory Group and DoIT prepared for the upcoming “second-generation portal” by conducting a campus-wide effort to determine requirements and select a vendor. As a result of this collaborative effort, a joint decision was made to acquire the Open Source product uPortal. Detailed plans were made for integrating this new portal infrastructure with the existing functionality of My UW-Madison.

While a great deal of emphasis was placed this year on improvements to existing functionality and preparations for the future, a number of new functions were introduced to the My UW-Madison portal, as well, and they are described in detail in Section 3 of this report.
Wisconsin Public Health Information Network (WI-PHIN)

DoIT continues to play a key role in our state’s public health infrastructure revitalization program known as WI-PHIN, in collaboration with the Department of Health and Family Services (DHFS), the Division of Public Health (DPH), State Laboratory of Hygiene (SLH), local public health agencies and WiscNet. Together, these groups have met the challenge represented by the rigorous technology objectives of the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Health Alert Network (HAN) and National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS) programs.

Our WI-PHIN accomplishments for the past year include the following:

Health Alert Network (HAN)
The third version of Wisconsin’s Health Alert Network (HAN) portal was produced and released. The HAN provides a 24x7 capability for the exchange of critical health and incident control information among state and local health officials, hospital emergency departments and law enforcement. Version 3 provided the following design improvements:
- Enhanced user interface,
- New keyword search engine,
- Improved level of access control for calendar events and documents,
- Implementation of a HAN registration wizard,
- Design and development of a delegated administration function,
- SAS-based visualization of data.
Broadcast Communications
The production and implementation was completed for the CommandCaller broadcast messaging system, capable of sending 2000 alerts in 30 minutes in a variety of formats.

Security
Following the Center for Disease Control guidelines, a security “Independent Verification and Validation” (IVandV) of the PHIN system was initiated. DoIT staff also studied the options and recommended an authentication solution for the Wisconsin implementation of the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS), a cornerstone PHIN component.

Training
Training on software systems that support Public Health Preparedness Critical Capacities was developed and delivered in a variety of formats, including instructor-led training, Web-based training, online tutorial, and streaming video.

Electronic Laboratory Reporting (ELR)
The scope of existing Electronic Lab Reporting (ELR) was expanded and the capabilities of the messaging service extended to allow transfer of files regardless of type. Secure (encrypted) data transfer to the PHIN includes the following daily transfer activities:
- Lab results for reportable communicable diseases from the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene and the Marshfield Clinic,
- Syndromic surveillance data from the Marshfield Clinic,
- Birth record information from the Department of Health and Family Services,
- Newborn audiometric screen results.
Incident Command Management
An emergency response partners review board was assembled to evaluate commercial, off-the-shelf systems capable of providing “incident command management” for the Health Alert Network.

Automated Disease Surveillance
The Wisconsin implementation of the base system (NBS) for the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS) was begun this year. Working under a co-development agreement with the Centers for Disease Control, DoIT completed a port of the base system from a Windows-based environment to a Unix (Solaris) environment.
Diversity and Improving Climate

Information Technology Academy Program
The Information Technology Academy (ITA) Program, whose mission is to train students in information technology skills and prepare them for competitive university admissions, serves approximately 60 high school students from under-represented demographic groups in the Madison area. ITA is DoIT's contribution to the Chancellor's Diversity Plan 2008. ITA successfully graduated its inaugural cohort in the Spring 2004, and all ITA graduates will attend two-year and four-year post-secondary institutions. Eight students received a full tuition scholarship to attend UW-Madison. ITA is closely linked with the UW-Madison “Pre-College Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence” (PEOPLE) initiative, which serves as a feeder program. ITA also works with the Madison Metropolitan School District and other UW pre-college programs to provide a wide range of activities, internships, academic support, and enrichment opportunities for its students.

Gender Equity Report
DoIT continues to conduct an annual salary equity review throughout the organization with findings that confirm salary equity is based on duties and responsibilities. We continue recruitment efforts to attract a diverse work force.

DoIT Staff Professional Development
Staff are encouraged and supported in continuing their education through tuition reimbursements and coverage of costs associated with professional conferences, certification programs, or workshops. Academic staff members continue to apply for and receive Professional Development Grants sponsored by the UW-Madison campus and by the UW System. DoIT actively encourages and supports Academic Staff grant applications, and will be equally supportive of Classified, Non-Represented Staff grant applications, now that a new professional development program has been established for these employees.

DoIT Employee Workshops
Over the past year, the DoIT Committee on Academic Staff Issues (CASI) and DoIT Human Resources have sponsored well-received Employee Compensation and Benefits Services workshops to ensure that all staff members are given periodic updates on the full compensation package. This ongoing benefits education complements the new employee orientation workshop introduced last year, which continues to provide new staff with an understanding of how their position, group, department, and division fit into the larger picture of the University.

“My Professional Development” Project
The "My Professional Development" Web project is administered by the Office of Human Resource Development and is a joint effort of the Office of the Provost, DoIT, OHRD, and the Office of Quality Improvement. A strategy for nurturing human resources, a priority in the campus strategic plan, “My Professional Development” provides staff with an online comprehensive connection to learning opportunities on campus. As part of its contribution to this joint effort, DoIT produced an efficient template for transitioning professional development from event-driven training to online learning. Currently, six sites use this template, and several other departments are considering the move.

DoIT Equity and Diversity Committee (EDC)
DoIT values pluralism as an essential component of an effective organization and is committed to creating and nurturing a diverse workplace. Over the past year, the EDC focused on ensuring that the DoIT facilities continued to be safe and accessible to all members of the community. Necessary repairs were made to the stairway treads throughout the Computer Sciences building and to the handicapped-accessible electronic doorways. In addition, the safety information posted on workplace bulletin boards was updated, and measures were taken to improve accommodations for those attending DoIT All-Staff meetings. The EDC’s goal for the coming year is to design a seminar series for DoIT employees that will focus on creating, promoting, and maintaining an equitable, diverse and respectful community.

Section 2: Support of University Functions (FY03-04)

This second section of DoIT’s Annual Report supplements the report’s initial overview of “Major Accomplishments” by providing a more detailed description of this year’s activities in support of University functions.

Network Infrastructure: Middleware

Middleware has become a way to control the complexity of our computing environments on campus. UW-Madison’s academic and administrative units are large and diverse and they access UW-Madison academic and administrative databases and applications for a variety of reasons. The ultimate goal of middleware is to maintain the privacy of personal information while ensuring that authorized people are able to access multiple campus applications by using a single sign-on and password.

UW-Madison University Directory Services (UDS)
This year, DoIT continued to enhance the directory services, which support user and access management for multiple instructional, administrative, and research applications and services on the UW-Madison campus. In January 2004, in collaboration with the Division of Academic Services, DoIT started work on the implementation of the “Applicant” affiliation in the directory in order to streamline the application process for prospective UW-Madison students. In early 2004, DoIT established the Authentication and Authorization Coordinating Team (ACT), a group of campus stakeholders working closely with DoIT staff to develop the necessary policies and procedures that are needed to govern the application and use of our custom-developed system for managing access to information based on campus role (affiliation).

Populations, Affiliations and Service Entitlements (PASE)
The PASE pilot is a collaborative initiative of the Office of Human Resources and DoIT. The PASE role-based identification system will ultimately replace the Photo ID Special Authorization system that currently stores demographic, affiliation and sponsor information about campus populations not included within the two main institutional source systems, the Integrated Student Information System (ISIS) and the Integrated Appointment Data System (IADS). PASE is a complex endeavor that involves collaboration across campus units to establish a unique name for each user (“identification”), a method by which each user can prove that they are the person associated with that unique name (“authentication”), and a set of services to which that authenticated person is entitled based on his or her role at the University (“authorization”).

UW-System Identification, Authentication and Authorization (IAA)
This system enables seamless identity management across UW institutions and supports secure implementation of common UW System applications such as the Appointment, Payroll, and Benefits System and Learn@UW (Desire2Learn). In early 2004, the IAA Governance Working Group was established to define policies and procedures for the use of these custom-developed authentication technologies and to ensure judicious and effective use of this UW-System resource. In 2003-04, DoIT developed a secure system for entering employee data, which is a critical part of the UW System’s new Human Resources Information Services (HRIS) application to be launched in January 2005.
Technologies for Learning and Teaching

In addition to the Learn@UW course management services provided for UW-Madison faculty and instructional staff, DoIT supports programs designed to support the achievement of transformative change in teaching and learning through technology.
Transforming Teaching through Technology - T4:
This program allows DoIT to allocate the resources of the Madison Initiative for 2003-06 in support of achieving transformative change in teaching and learning though technology. In FY 2003-04, DoIT established a program called ENGAGE that involves faculty and instructional staff in identifying innovative solutions that are based on sound pedagogical approaches and employ new and emerging technologies and enterprise infrastructures to address learning and teaching challenges.

Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT)
This past year, DoIT funded $121,742 in new faculty-led projects, including a video annotation tool for Education Administration students and “PrepTalks,” a collection of “streaming media” study materials for Veterinary School students. Ongoing projects to be completed by December 2004 include an online tool allowing students to experiment with different weed and crop growth management strategies and evaluate the results, and a three-dimensional learning space for teaching Buddhism.

WebGrants Program
This past year, DoIT provided $75,000 to support an informational Web site project dedicated to the uses of streaming media technology in instruction. The Web site, which is scheduled for completion by December 2004, attracted an additional $50,000 in funding from AT&T to support site updates.

Online Web Resources
In FY 2003-04, DoIT developed a number of new online Web resources explaining how to incorporate audio, video, and PowerPoint slides into Web-based instruction, accompanied by faculty showcases and discussions of Web site accessibility issues. We also produced resources for support of Learn@UW, both printed materials and online tutorials, including those within the Help Desk’s online Knowledge Base.
Web-based Services

The My UW-Madison Portal
This year, increased functionality was added to the My UW-Madison portal based on campus feedback and the strategic oversight of the My UW-Madison Advisory Committee. The portal offers secure access to personalized content and can be customized to meet an individual’s unique needs. The role a person occupies in the campus community – student, advisor, staff member, faculty, etc. – determines which groups of services that person is authorized to access. These groups of services are categorized under major headings or “tabs” that appear at the top of the portal’s Web pages (e.g., Student Record, Financial, Academic, Work Record, etc.). Within DoIT, a team of developers is responsible for each “tab” and its associated services. This year, new portal usage and performance reports were designed and made available to these “tab” development teams.

This year, a new interface between the PeopleSoft ISIS system and the MUM portal was completed in anticipation of the upcoming shift to the uPortal framework software. An “Accept/Decline Financial Aid” module was added to the ” Financial” tab. The new “Work Record” tab was launched, offering online “Earnings Statements” delivered to all faculty, staff and student workers, online consolidated bills from DoIT, and “My Professional Development,” a personalized tool to aid career planning and development. “Library Reserves,” “Course Rosters” and “Course Services” modules were added to the “Academic” tab. They met with great approval from instructors and students alike. Also added to the “Academic” tab was the “Biological Sciences Course Guide,” sponsored by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Committee, which allows faculty and departmental administrators to publish instructor-specific Course Descriptions for the biological sciences. Students and advisors can look up descriptions using a variety of search criteria, or may browse by department, course number, and cross-departmental domain. Finally, a “Requisition and Number Generator” function was added to the “Resources” tab. Extensive work was completed in preparation for the early summer inclusion of “Parking” to the “Resources” tab, making it possible for members of the campus community to purchase parking privileges and renew them online.
UW-Madison Academic and Administrative Applications

DoIT supports mission-critical University functions that rely on enterprise application systems. DoIT continues to place a high priority on providing a reliable and secure campus email service via the WiscMail System, along with convenient, authorized access to administrative systems for the management of student information, employee payroll and benefits, library resources, grants, and electronic financial transactions (or “e-commerce”).

Integrated Student Information Systems (ISIS)
Two years ago, the Integrated Student Information System (ISIS) moved to the Web via the My UW-Madison portal, giving students, faculty and staff more convenient access to processing support for prospective student records, admissions, curricular information and timetable, financial aid, registration and student records, and student fees. This year, DoIT implemented electronic class rosters for faculty in My UW-Madison. Self-service features for students in My UW-Madison were improved, and electronic financial aid award notification and acceptance were implemented.

UW-Madison Human Resources / Payroll Applications
This past year, DoIT assigned a full-time technical project manager and additional staff to prepare all mission-critical Human Resources/Payroll interfaces and reports for UW-Madison in anticipation of the January 2005 implementation of the Appointments, Payroll, and Benefits System (APBS) across the UW System.

Grant Administration Software
Grant management requirements have become more diverse and more exacting over the years. The transition to the Shared Financial System (SFS), which tracks the financial activity of the UW System along with the replacement of legacy accounting practices, has broken the linkages between the Extramural Support Information System (ESIS) and legacy administration systems. These changes are driving the work on a project to transition to a new grants administration system. DoIT is working closely with the Graduate School, Research and Sponsored Programs and Accounting Services to ensure that the new grant management system will maintain the tight integration with accounting and other critical systems, plus support the demands for additional functionality. Current efforts involve refining high-level requirements, estimating costs of alternatives and providing information to facilitate the selection decision for a new system. Once the decision is made, implementation plans will be developed.

Student Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS)
FY 2003-04 represented the first full academic year in which the newly implemented SEVIS was deployed at UW-Madison. We successfully processed student exchange visitor information using the new system, and there were no visa problems.

Library Information System
In FY 2003-04, we upgraded the campus’s primary library management and public catalog system software (Voyager) and integrated library e-reserves, making them accessible campus-wide via the My UW-Madison (MUM) portal. In addition, a number of new Digital Library applications were implemented, including the Surveyors' Notebooks, the Icelandic Dictionary, the Aldo Leopold Collection Finding Aids, and an upgraded PrimateLit database. The associated image server was expanded, and software used for managing and accessing the expanding Digital Library was upgraded. Finally, this year’s successful implementation of an institutional repository service prototype based on MIT-developed DSpace software lays the groundwork for a pilot production service that DoIT intends to roll out to meet the repository needs of the campus and the UW System.

E-Commerce Applications
This year (FY 2003-04), the e-commerce Web applications group implemented a requisition-generating module within the campus portal, a graduate admissions system for Electrical and Computer Engineering, a content management system for the Agricultural Research Station and its 14 centers, a resource tracking tool for the Office of Quality Improvement, and a system for the Secretary of the Faculty to manage faculty and staff appointments and committee memberships. DoIT’s centralized e-commerce service (WiscCharge) successfully processed 120,000 credit card transactions worth $14.9 million in the past year. Fourteen new campus merchants also subscribed to the service in the past 12 months.
UW System Academic and Administrative Applications

The UW System has embarked on a collaborative initiative known as the “Method for Implementing with Lowest Effort and Resources,” or MILER. As participants in the MILER cross-institutional team, DoIT application developers, database administrators, networking support, production support operations and Help Desk personnel collaborate with other UW System colleges and universities on the customization and implementation of secure enterprise applications for use across the UW System.

Student Administration System
This past year, as participants in the collaborative MILER initiative, DoIT personnel helped to upgrade the student administration systems at five campuses in the UW System. The student administration systems at UW-Milwaukee and UW-Superior are now able to manage student exchange visitor information. DoIT also worked to ensure a successful registration for 2004-05 at UW-Parkside by helping that campus convert its admissions, financial aid, timetable and student records data for use in the PeopleSoft student administration system.

Course Management System
DoIT integrated its Identification, Authentication, and Authorization (IAA) tool into the UW System’s Desire2Learn (D2L) Course Management System, so faculty, staff, and students at the various UW colleges and universities could log into their campus course management systems seamlessly.

Shared Financial System (SFS)
Currently, eleven UW System campuses are working together to implement a Shared Financial System consisting of PeopleSoft Financial modules for general ledger, accounts payable, purchasing, and asset management. An additional four campuses submit data into this shared system. This year, UW System administrators and DoIT personnel collaborated on enhancements to the “Accounts Payable” function within the Shared Financial System, introducing legacy editing capabilities, the payroll interface, salary cash transfers and salary maintenance applications.

Human Resource Information Systems
The Appointments, Payroll, and Benefits System (APBS), scheduled for system-wide implementation in January 2005, will provide centrally administered human resource management for UW universities and colleges. In anticipation of that launch date, DoIT worked closely with the UW System Administration over the past year to modify the UW System Budget application so that it would accept employment data from the UW System’s shared Human Resource Information System.

Wisconsin Data Mart (WISDM) and UW System Financial Data Mart Query Library
DoIT continues to work closely with UW System Administration to enhance WISDM and the Query Library. WISDM is a custom-developed web-based system for obtaining and reporting financial information that has been entered into the UW System’s common accounting service, known as the Shared Financial System (or SFS). WISDM allows for efficient, accessible, responsive retrieval of financial information and is accessed currently by 700-800 system-wide users on an average day. In addition, system-wide WISDM users are able to increase the efficiency of their information retrieval by accessing the UW System Financial Data Mart Query Library. The library allows them to take advantage of database queries already developed and performed by other staff members.

Electronic Resource Management for UW System Libraries
DoIT is implementing a shared “Ex Libris” software system for all UW System libraries modeled on the shared Library Information System presently used by several UW System campuses. In 2003-04, DoIT participated in the Request For Proposal evaluation process that led to the selection of the “Ex Libris” software products. These products offer library patrons easy reference linking to full-text journal articles, along with powerful cross-database searching capabilities.
User Support, Service Delivery, and Technology Training

DoIT is an organization that serves the technology needs of the campus community. DoIT personnel often work behind the scenes maintaining data storage operations and developing outstanding applications that ensure vital information is secure at all times, yet conveniently accessible to authorized students, faculty, and staff. While many DoIT members work backstage, others are in daily contact with the faculty, students, and staff whom they serve. These personnel provide technical help, hardware repair, and software training and survey the campus population. They also monitor the needs of the campus population through annual satisfaction surveys, eliciting valuable feedback that helps shape DoIT’s quality improvement initiatives. In 2003-04, DoIT initiated several changes aimed at making it easier for faculty, staff, and students to receive the technical assistance they need, when they need it.

Single-Point Customer Interface Initiative
All six of DoIT’s User Services groups have agreed to use a single document management system, reducing staff training and operational overhead, providing information to customers in a consistent format, simplifying the updating of documents, and enabling DoIT to consolidate its many user services into a single service area. Our Help Desk and Product Sales groups are already making extensive use of this system, and other groups are in the process of migration. In anticipation of the major upgrade of our Oracle-based Business System which we expect to complete in the coming year, we have made a number of improvements to our online product catalog and to our methods of accessing customer order history, processing returned products and routing customers to our service areas.

DoIT Help Desk / Post-Sales Process Improvements
Our Help Desk service has shown significant improvement in the last several years. Callers now wait an average of 30 seconds before we answer (well within support industry benchmarks). For complex issues that require technical experts to respond within one or two business days, we have improved turnaround time significantly. In addition, we currently have nearly 3,000 support articles on our searchable Web site. Customer surveys indicate that 90% of our customers are satisfied with our service. This past year, the customer satisfaction level was raised even higher as we implemented rotating shift assignments in our Repair and Desktop Support (RaDS) group. These shift changes have significantly improved our ability to provide backup and urgent response support on departmental desktop support contracts. Changes were made to the Help Desk as well, reducing errors and facilitating the escalation of calls from our first-level agents to technical experts across our organization. Moreover, the procedures for processing cases that have significant campus-wide impact were reviewed. Now termed “Impact 1,” these cases require immediate attention, frequently by several different DoIT groups, and may occur at any hour of any day. Step-by-step procedures for identifying and escalating cases that require immediate attention and involve several different DoIT departments were documented, and Help Desk staff members were trained in these new procedures.

Training Assistance
This year, DoIT provided one-on-one consultations and workshops for faculty and instructional staff, preparing instructional technology support staff across campus to field faculty and staff questions regarding Learn@UW. In addition, DoIT co-sponsored this year’s four-day “Annual Teaching and Learning Symposium” entitled “Literacies of Teaching and Learning” (May 2004). DoIT staff presented workshops on a variety of topics, including Learn@UW, Web accessibility, and instructional design and development, while faculty showcased projects supported by DoIT grants. The New Media Centers upgraded their internal network to gigabit speed and now offer users the ability to store large amounts of data, including video files. This year, in our program for students employed in information technology positions at the University, we trained 157 students, a record number, in Desktop and Network Support, Web Site Development, Video Production, Graphics Development and Instructional Web Site Design utilizing a course management system.

Printing Service
With the new online order submission system unveiled this year, DoIT customers can access an order entry system and submit their digital files without customer service assistance, reducing time to first proof by up to 30%. We also brought online a new color digital press, which produces images up to 12"x19" in size at speeds of up to 60 pages per minute, all with offset quality. A very-high-quality large format six-color ink jet printer capable of 42"x100” output along with full film lamination was added as well.

Annual IT Surveys
To help evaluate our services, DoIT continued gathering helpful feedback via our twelfth annual student survey and our eighth faculty/staff survey. This year, the campus shift from desktop to laptop ownership and the demand for higher-speed access methods were particularly noticeable. Faculty and staff satisfaction with DoIT’s product information and recommendations and for the service provided by the Tech Store increased significantly. Eighty-five percent of students said they were “satisfied” to “very satisfied” with UW computing services. All student respondents reported that they were aware of and used the free antivirus software DoIT provides, giving the free software a very high satisfaction rating. Students also gave high marks to the Help Desk, the campus computing labs, the Tech Store, the free software training program, the WiscWorld CD and the laptop checkout program. Off-campus and on-campus students differed in terms of priorities, with on-campus students wanting a faster campus network and off-campus students wanting more wireless locations and more computers in campus labs.
Improving Campus Diversity through Web Accessibility

The National Association of College and University Business Officers recognized DoIT as a leader in areas of Web accessibility policy development and increased access to Web information and resources. An article in the January 2004 issue of Business Officer Magazine, "Accessible Technology: Opening Doors for Disabled Students" by Diana Oblinger and Laura Ruby, concludes that “because of the collaborative work done by the Web Accessibility Committee at UW-Madison in the past two years, ‘an inclusive e-culture is developing’ on campus.” (http://www.nacubo.org/x2074.xml) Resources developed by DoIT help faculty and staff understand and comply with the campus Web accessibility policy. These include educational videos, an online Web accessibility checklist, and an online course called "Web Accessibility 101: Policy, Standards, and Design Techniques.” The collaborative expertise of cross-functional, knowledgeable staff continues to generate accessible electronic resources and serves as a model for others nationwide to emulate.

Section 3: Technology Goals and Initiatives for 2004-05

Over the coming year, progress will be made in the development and implementation of technology initiatives that help UW-Madison achieve its strategic goals.

Major Strategic Initiatives

Strengthening Partnerships Across Campus
Last year an initiative was begun to develop a framework for collaborative decision-making that would strengthen technology partnerships across campus. University leaders collaborated with DoIT to identify and address the larger technology issues that affect the entire campus community. In an effort to envision the best possible working relationship between DoIT and the University’s various schools, colleges, and divisions — particularly during the development and implementation of major, campus-wide technology initiatives — we focused our 2003-04 discussions on the issues surrounding distributed versus centralized technology support.

Since there is a great deal of technology expertise and talent distributed across the campus, and a good number of technology initiatives underway within individual units, the Deans’ Council requested that DoIT conduct a survey of all campus units. The survey goal was to identify the number, type, and implementation stage of academic and administrative applications that were developed internally by those units over the last five years. Sharing information that might help reduce duplicative application development efforts across campus was expected to increase technology collaboration among the various schools, colleges, and divisions. The results of that survey are being made available to the Deans and their technology support staff.

Internal Process Improvement
In 2004-05, DoIT will launch a major planning initiative aimed at the ongoing improvement and standardization of its internal processes. Technologies and services are increasingly interoperable and interdependent, and their implementation requires increased collaboration among multiple departments within the division. To provide the best possible service to the UW-Madison campus community and to ensure that cross-departmental projects are managed with optimal efficiency, processes across the entire division will be streamlined and standardized over the coming year. DoIT is committed to allocating the necessary resources to support the identification of best practices and to establish effective standards for project management, development environments, documentation and communication.
Network Infrastructure

DoIT is involved in initiatives at the campus, state, regional, and national levels, all aimed at ensuring that Wisconsin citizens reap the full educational and economic benefits made possible by next-generation high-speed networks devoted to research and learning. DoIT is working in collaboration with the UW System to build a UW System-wide “Next Generation Network,” linking all the institutions within the System to one another and to Internet2, the national advanced research network.

Wisconsin Educational and Research Optical Cyberinfrastructure (WEROC) is the current initiative to provide a next-generation network for the entire UW System. WEROC will impact students and faculty statewide, enabling educational and research partnerships far beyond campus. Students will have the ability to interact through the network with the best minds in the region, the nation, and around the world as they solve cutting-edge problems and generate breakthroughs in high-growth fields, including the life sciences, geoscience, and computational physics. Nontraditional and place-bound students will also have additional opportunities to enhance their education, because the high-speed network will make it possible for the UW System to offer far more distance education and Web-based courses. Furthermore, the UW System “Next Generation Network” will be connected to the State of Wisconsin’s advanced video and data network for the K-12 schools and technical colleges, opening additional opportunities for collaboration and the sharing of resources.

Moreover, by dedicating networking resources specifically to UW System researchers, WEROC will have a positive effect on collaborative projects with state, national, and international industries in the high-growth areas of life science, engineering, geoscience, and computational physics, where greater network capacity is required. The states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois are much further along in connecting their respective statewide university systems to Internet2, placing Wisconsin researchers at a disadvantage within the Midwest region.

The following describes the various network infrastructure initiatives at the campus, state, regional, and national levels and their goals for FY 2004-05:

Campus Advanced Network
Network Monitoring: We have developed the Authorized Agent Network Tools Suite (AANTS), a Web-based set of tools to allow technology support staff within the University’s various schools, colleges, and divisions to configure, monitor and troubleshoot network equipment on the 21st Century Network Upgrade. We expect to continue to evolve the capabilities of AANTS in conjunction with the campus middleware infrastructure, allowing for greater role-based control of information access via standard, secure authentication / authorization mechanisms. In the coming year, we will work on additional management capabilities to ensure that authorized agents can track down the physical location of malfunctioning or compromised equipment within a building. In addition, we expect to develop and implement new methods of automating network maintenance in order to keep our network configuration consistent across campus with as little manual intervention as possible. Guest Accounts: A significant number of visiting scholars and contractors require access to the campus network for the duration of their stay. In the coming year, we plan to continue work on the creation of a guest account facility for wireless and other network authentication. Guest accounts are a necessary precursor to any significant deployment of network authentication, specifically authentication for wireless access and open ports in classrooms.

Statewide Advanced Network
Wisconsin Educational and Research Optical Cyberinfrastructure (WEROC): The UW System is leading an initiative to build a new statewide network for research and education. WEROC will make use of existing, statewide fiber resources to deliver high-speed connectivity to UW System institutions throughout the state and enable high-speed connectivity from WEROC to research networks in the Chicago area and beyond. In the past year, DoIT has finalized fiber leases for the first leg of WEROC. Along with its UW System, WiscNet, and WEROC partners, DoIT expects to complete this first leg by fall 2004. The UW will also procure fiber resources for a WEROC backbone and develop partnerships with telecommunications providers to accommodate last-mile connectivity challenges and extend WEROC to all UW System institutions. It is our intent to have the WEROC core backbone network running in FY 2004-05.

National Advanced Network
National Lambda Rail (NLR): The Chief Information Officers of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) schools have committed to being part of National Lambda Rail, a major initiative of the nation’s research universities and private sector technology companies to provide a national scale infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications. By taking advantage of the distressed state of the telecommunications industry to obtain fiber resources across the country, NLR has successfully leased and lit two optical network pathways to this point. One pathway connects Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Washington DC, Raleigh and Atlanta, and another runs along the west coast from Seattle to San Diego. Phase 2 will extend the infrastructure across the midsection of the country by spring 2005. Research universities in the northern tier of states (including the UW System institutions) face the challenge of reaching the National Lambda Rail, and this fact has led them to join with one another, forming the Northern Tier Network Consortium (see NTNC description below).

Regional Advanced Network
The Northern Tier Network Consortium (NTNC): Both the existing national research infrastructure (the “Abilene” backbone) and the proposed National Lambda Rail bypass the northern tier of states along the Canadian border between the primary networking nodes in Chicago and Seattle. This leaves Northern Tier research universities, particularly those in the Dakotas, Montana and Idaho, at a significant disadvantage. Without direct connectivity to the advanced networking capabilities of the national research infrastructure, it is likely that these universities will be unable to participate in key national and international collaborations. To address this problem, UW-Madison and WiscNet are taking leadership roles in the Northern Tier Network Consortium. NTNC is an Internet2-supported effort on the part of research universities and national laboratories in the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Washington to put in place an advanced network path connecting them to one another and to the national research infrastructure. The Northern Tier Network will provide the additional connectivity to global network resources that our researchers in the UW System need. At the same time, Wisconsin will be helping Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana access research networking capabilities through Wisconsin’s nearly completed pathway to the national research networks in Chicago (the first leg of the WEROC initiative). In helping our neighbors to the west, we hope to offset some of the costs of building this critical leg of the WEROC initiative.

Advanced Communication of Research
The ResearchChannel Initiative: The University’s membership in the ResearchChannel (made possible through a joint effort of the Graduate School and DoIT) gives UW-Madison researchers the chance to communicate their research to a broad public audience. The ResearchChannel is a consortium of the world’s leading research universities, institutions and corporate research centers dedicated to using cable, satellite, and Web streaming technologies to broadcast research-oriented video programming. Unlike public television affiliates, the ResearchChannel offers researchers editorial control over their own content and guarantees distribution of that content to a global audience of television subscribers and high-speed Internet users. During 2003-04, four UW-Madison-produced programs premiered on the ResearchChannel broadcast channel and were also streamed (“Webcast”) live over the Internet. These programs can be accessed on demand at any time by visiting the organization’s Web site (www.researchchannel.org.), where they are stored in the ResearchChannel’s extensive online video library under the series title, “The University of Wisconsin-Madison Presents.” In fall 2004, ResearchChannel will premiere “UW-Madison’s Undergraduate Symposium 2004,” a program produced specifically for the purpose of distribution over the ResearchChannel as a means of highlighting the exceptional research and service learning opportunities that the University offers its undergraduates. In 2004-05, we plan to extend our participation in the ResearchChannel by coordinating the development of a faculty-governed, peer-review process designed to evaluate proposals and award funding for research-oriented video production projects.
Security

DoIT will continue working with the campus community to build a robust security infrastructure that will provide central and shared authentication and authorization services to meet the appropriate level of security assurance. In the coming year, new functionalities will be integrated into the University Directory Service (UDS), enabling us to identify each member of the campus community by their role (or affiliation) and by the kinds of information they are entitled to access. In addition, some of the core UDS software will be enhanced, greatly reducing the overhead in implementing new types of affiliations in the future.

Identification, Authentication and Authorization (IAA)
In FY 2004-05, the development of campus-wide authentication and authorization services built on the foundation of our University Directory Service will move forward. In fall 2004, a central authentication service (WebISO) will be offered, allowing users to access multiple Web-based applications by using a single initial sign-on. Over the course of the year, the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) initiative will move forward as well in order to protect the security of the University’s communications by validating the identify of each party during all transactions that take place over the campus network.

Junk Email Filtering and Spam Detection
The amount of campus email has more than doubled in the past six months and has reached peaks of 3.1 million messages per day, 60% of which are potentially spam and virus-related. To help fend off this junk mail assault, filtering will be changed from “opt in” to “opt out” in the summer of 2004, meaning that users will receive filtering by default unless they indicate they do not want this service. New antivirus software will be installed that provides much greater flexibility, enabling better response to the virus-attack-of-the-week and transforming disinfected spam viruses into easily eliminated junk mail. In addition, the capacity of the email server cluster will be substantially increased during FY 2004-05 to meet the message delivery speed the campus community demands during high-volume virus and worm attacks. Aging machines will be replaced with new designs that permit improved scaling and more redundancy.
Technologies for Teaching and Learning

Learn@UW
DoIT’s new course management service offers a range of course development support for faculty and instructional staff, including training and help with the conversion of courses from WebCT or Blackboard to Learn@UW, the newly adopted course management system for UW-Madison and the entire UW System. By the start of academic year 2004-05, all UW-Madison courses taught in fall 2003, and in spring and summer 2004 will have been converted from WebCT to Learn@UW. Most WebCT usage is expected to end by September 2004. It is anticipated that over 1,000 Learn@UW courses will be offered during academic year 2004-05. Over the course of 2004-05, Learn@UW will be integrated with final grade submissions to the Office of Registrar, with Library Course Pages and with the My UW Madison (MUM) portal. DoIT’s Madison-based Learn@UW team will continue to work extensively with UW-System and the Desire2Learn (D2L) vendor to align the software with instructional needs, including testing and implementing new products for synchronous communications (such as an electronic whiteboard), a learning object repository (including image database support), self-registration for workforce training, and foreign language support. UW-Madison faculty and their support staff will continue to provide product feedback and participate in testing of new releases.

Sakai Open-Source Course Management System
UW-Madison is an Educational Project Partner in Sakai, the cross-institutional initiative to develop an open-source, standards-based framework for course delivery that addresses the needs of higher education. DoIT staff will actively participate in this collaborative development effort by offering feedback during the biannual meetings of Sakai.

Web Site for Every Course
Based on this year’s recommendation of the Information Technology Committee (ITC), DoIT’s preliminary plan is to continue development of a basic course Web site builder tool for faculty and instructional staff who are new to Web-based course content delivery. Faculty and staff will be able to access the course Web site building tool from within the “Instructor’s View” of the My UW-Madison portal. The tool will guide faculty and instructional staff through the steps required to publish a basic course Web site (syllabus, class roster, and course content). Students enrolled in the course will be able to access that information via the “Student View” of the portal. As their comfort level with the technology rises, faculty and instructional staff may choose to enhance these basic course Web sites by drawing on the extensive features available to them through Learn@UW (including discussion sections, grading and quizzing).

Transforming Teaching through Technology (T4)
The T4 initiative promotes and supports the development, implementation and dissemination of technology to model the transformation of teaching and learning at our institution. By June 30, 2004, we plan to complete all Teaching and Learning Technology (TLT) grant projects. In academic year 2004-05, both TLT and the WebGrants program will be replaced by a new framework for campus-wide transformation of teaching and learning, built on three “New Connections” awards programs for UW-Madison faculty and instructional staff:
- Faculty Fellows Innovation Awards Program, combining unique pedagogy with emergent network technologies and tools to expand student learning opportunities.
- Networked Learning Solutions Awards Program, beginning with campus-wide faculty and instructional staff use of the Multimedia Learning Assistant exemplar tool, which allows instructors to create media-rich Web-based lessons. Students are able to watch a video that has been annotated for them by their instructor. The video may be stopped at any point. The instructor can time his or her commentary to appear when the student has reached the appropriate point in the video.
- Networked Course Management Awards Program, promoting the use by faculty and instructional staff of prepared Learn@UW templates.
The Croquet Project
The Croquet Project is an open-source educational software development initiative funded by DoIT and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, with the support of Hewlett-Packard and the Viewpoints Research Institute, headed by Dr. Alan Kay, the inventor of the networked personal computer and the overlapping windows computer interface. Croquet’s combination of computer software and network architecture allows for deep collaboration and resource sharing among large numbers of users across a large-scale distributed information system. Major figures in computing are actively involved in the collaborative development of Croquet technologies, including Dr. David P. Reed, developer of TCP/IP, the Internet’s underlying communications technology, and Mark McCahill, developer of Gopher, the most well known tool for accessing Internet resources prior to the World Wide Web. The Croquet Educational Consortium, jointly managed by DoIT and the University of Minnesota, will develop and deploy open-source and interoperable implementations of Croquet software for use in educational settings.
Web-Based Services

The Web has become the primary means for providing access for faculty, staff, and students to instructional, library, research, administration, and personal information. In 2004-05, progress will be made on several key Web-based initiatives that leverage the University’s ongoing investment in its network and infrastructure, and are therefore of important strategic interest for the campus.

My UW-Madison (MUM)
Developed with broad campus input, the My UW-Madison (MUM) portal provides students, faculty and staff with an easy-to-use, secure gateway to personalized online information. From a technical standpoint, information personalization and security require a robust portal infrastructure created specifically to meet the needs of higher education. In 2004-05, the portal’s underlying software, network design, and server configurations will be reengineered to provide improved performance, fault tolerance, and rapid recovery from catastrophic failures. The campus has chosen to replace the portal’s current underlying software with uPortal, a new open-source software product known created by a national consortium of higher education institutions. The migration of current content and applications to uPortal is expected to be complete by September 2005. The coming year will be taken up with the complexities of this migration, which will also involve the rewriting of outdated code. While the migration project will limit the amount of time available for development and introduction of new portal functionality in FY 2004-05, a number of advances are expected nevertheless, including improvements to the portal’s Academic tab, the implementation of seamless sign-on to Learn@UW courses, and the furtherance of plans to offer Web sites for every UW-Madison course.

Digital Academic Television Network (DATN)
In the coming year, as the 21st Century Network Upgrade continues and campus buildings are outfitted with the necessary electronic equipment, departments housed within these buildings will gain access to DATN. DoIT plans to simplify channel selection on the DATN Web site. DoIT will also create a customized UW-Madison appearance for the video application that allows campus computer users to view educational programming from their workstations.

Internet Protocol (IP) Telephony
In 2003-04, DoIT began a pilot project aimed at testing the 21st Century Network’s capacity to deliver telephone service to the campus community. The technology involved is known as “Voice-over-Internet Protocol” or VoIP. This year, long distance billing issues were resolved, the Cisco VoIP platform was upgraded to the latest version, VoIP phones were installed for the pilot, and security issues were addressed. In the coming year, we expect to continue participating in the national Internet2 VoIP working group. As the UW-Madison pilot project continues, issues relating to wireless VoIP phones, VoIP on campus, and the integration of IP telephony with the University Voice Mail System will be addressed.
UW-Madison Academic and Administrative Applications

UW-Madison Human Resource / Payroll Applications
In 2004-05, we will implement the UW-Madison Human Resources / Payroll applications and address additional interface and reporting needs following the system-wide implementation of the Lawson Human Resources Information System (HRIS) in January 2005.

Grant Administration Software
DoIT is currently working closely with the Graduate School, Research and Sponsored Programs, and Accounting Services to define high-level requirements, estimate cost alternatives and provide information to facilitate the selection process for a new grants management system that can be tightly integrated with accounting and other critical administrative systems. A decision will be reached and project plans developed shortly in order to proceed with implementation during the coming year.

Integrated Student Information System (ISIS)
Now that the campus community has access to student information via the My UW-Madison portal, critical functions and capabilities will continue to be added to improve this convenient service. In FY 2004-05, paper grade submission will be replaced with electronic grading, degree credit transfer processing will be improved, and electronic check payments will be implemented.

Student Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS)
After a successful first year of deployment in FY 2003-04, FY 2004-05 will be spent evaluating the reporting software and adapting it to the new federal requirements for the collection and retrieval of data on international students.

Library Information System
In FY 2004-05, progress will be made on the development of library course Web pages, including library e-reserves and instructional resources associated with the specific course, department, or discipline, which may be accessed from both Learn@UW and the My UW-Madison portal. DoIT will work with campus faculty, departments, research centers and other units with digital intellectual property in order to capture that property, describe it, and make it available through the institutional repository. In addition, DoIT will continue expanding the applications and supporting software features of the Digital Library service. DoIT will also plan a major upgrade of the library information system in preparation for a major upgrade to the library’s database. This system upgrade will also make it possible for the library information system to offer full international character sets.

E-Commerce
In FY 2004-05, additional e-commerce applications will be developed, using a service-oriented architectural model and emerging technologies. Common application components will be built to increase flexibility and interoperability of applications and services, and to reduce development time and customer costs. In addition, DoIT’s centralized e-commerce service (WiscCharge) will improve its Web site design to provide users with a single payment gateway.
UW System Academic and Administrative Applications

DoIT is an ongoing participant in a UW System collaboration of technology personnel working to reduce the costs for deploying enterprise application systems across multiple UW colleges and universities. Known as MILER (“Method for Implementing with Lowest Effort and Resources”), this cross-institutional team will continue to receive assistance from DoIT in a variety of areas. Additional DoIT-employed consultants will join the team in the coming year.

Student Administration Systems
DoIT will continue to assist UW campuses with their student administration applications, with the implementation of a shared human resources system, with the identification, authentication, and authorization of system users, and with the integration of the Desire2Learn course management system. In FY 2004-05, DoIT will complete the upgrade of the UW-Parkside student administration system and assess its impact. Moreover, in order to help UW System campuses meet the federal mandate for Student Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) compliance, DoIT personnel will monitor and alert UW System campuses to changes both in SEVIS and in the federal Patriot Act Solution (PASS) and assist them in implementing the required adjustments.

Shared Financial Systems
Eleven UW System campuses are working together to install a shared system tracking the UW financial activity, while an additional four campuses submit data into the shared system. In the coming year, DoIT will assist with several major projects, including testing and modifying the financial system’s interface, upgrading the system to the latest software release, and developing a new tax reporting capacity.

Wisconsin Data Mart (WISDM) and Data Warehouse / Query Library
Continued improvements will be made in the coming year to these custom-developed applications, which are accessed each day by an average of 700-800 users seeking financial data.

Electronic Resource Management for UW System Libraries
DoIT plans to complete full implementation of the “Ex Libris” electronic resource management products in a shared utility environment. At UW-Madison, new management products, particularly the metadata catalog of all UW-Madison online library resources, will be integrated more fully into our existing Digital Library and library Web service in 2004-05.
User Support, Service Delivery, and Technology Training

DoIT Help Desk and Post-Sales Support
In fall 2004, the Help Desk and the Repair and Desktop Support service areas will be integrated. This integrated department will adopt a single document management system, driving improvements in our customer-accessible online services and enabling staff to answer a broader range of questions, thereby improving response time to customer inquiries. Our telephone call management system will be upgraded and adopted across all of our service areas to improve call routing, reduce the number of customer waiting queues, and better monitor the quality of service being delivered by our phone agents. Further consolidation of our customer service areas, including walk-in, phone, and online contact points, will be considered in the coming year. As this may require remodeling of physical space and staff reassignments, the target date for further consolidation of our service areas is summer 2005.

Computer Labs and Kiosks
In FY 2004-05, the InfoLabs will be renamed “Campus Computing Labs.” The request process that determines the courseware and productivity software chosen for placement in the labs will be improved. Two campus computing labs will be renovated in the coming year: the Learning Support Services (LSS) Computer Lab, serving the College of Letters and Science, and the Wendt Computer Lab, serving the College of Engineering, the Department of Computer Sciences, the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and the Department of Statistics. Approximately a third of our desktop computers campus-wide will be replaced, and 100 new laptops will be purchased, bringing to more than 250 the number of portable computers available for short-term loan. Finally, kiosk use will be monitored and steps taken to increase usage while improving customer service.

New Media Centers
In the coming year, DoIT plans to increase promotion of the two New Media Centers on campus, one located in the BioTechnology Center and the other in Helen C. White Hall. They provide computing facilities, consulting services, and state-of-the-art multimedia development tools for the production of educational, research and instructional materials, along with multimedia classrooms for hands-on instruction and audio, video, photographic and computer hardware equipment that the Centers loan out to the campus community. The College Library New Media Center (CNMC) located in Helen C. White Hall Room 2258 has a drop-in facility where DoIT’s New Media consultants are available to help faculty and instructional staff incorporate new media into their Learn@UW timetable courses or their other research and teaching activities. In 2004-05, the Biology New Media Center will begin hosting a unique set of Web-based bioinformatics tools, thanks to a partnership among the UW-Madison Biotechnology Center, the Genome Center of Wisconsin and the Center for Biology Education. Owing to this year’s acquisition of a powerful database and Web application from Sun Microsystems, researchers at UW-Madison and the UW System as a whole will have access to a valuable national resource, one that is currently hosted exclusively from the San Diego Supercomputing Center facility.

Training Assistance
DoIT will continue to provide a set of free and fee-based training services to meet the needs of our diverse campus population.
- For Faculty and Instructional Staff: DoIT will continue to offer free, one-on-one instructional technology consultations for faculty and campus support staff to meet the needs of “mainstream” instructors who are the targeted audience for the Learn@UW course management system. Workshop demonstrations of Learn@UW, including discussion of grading, quizzing, surveys, content tools, discussion and chat, will be held at the beginning of each semester. In spring 2005, DoIT will once again co-sponsor the “Annual Teaching and Learning Symposium,” and DoIT instructional technology support staff will showcase faculty achievements and present workshops on instructional design.
- For Campus Technical Staff: Free “Train the Trainer” sessions on Learn@UW will be offered, along with professional development and networking events on topics of particular interest to this group. DoIT will also continue to provide fee-based technical training on both Windows and Macintosh platforms, along with Authorized Agent training of campus technology staff in support of the 21st Century Network upgrade initiative.
- For Students: Through DoIT’s “Student Technical Training” (STT) program, University students who are actively seeking campus employment in an information technology position receive free technical training in Desktop and Network Support, Web Site Development, Video Production, Graphics Development and Instructional Web Site Design using a course management system. DoIT provides a variety of free software training classes available to any UW-Madison student through our “Software Training for Students” (STS) program, along with free specialized classes to meet the needs of the Registered Student Organizations (RSOs).
Printing Services
In early FY 2005, a new high-speed booklet binder will be acquired to increase the speed of book production by 50% and improve product quality without increasing customer costs.
Campus Diversity

Information Technology Academy (ITA) Program
Following the graduation of this program’s first cohort in 2003-04, the Information Technology Academy Program will continue to serve approximately 60 high school students during the 2004-05 academic year, training them in information technology skills and preparing them for competitive university admissions. The program staff plans to work closely with the Madison Metropolitan School District in forming an articulation agreement that will grant high school credit to ITA participants. Additionally, in an effort to prepare students for information technology internships and college jobs, the program curriculum will be modified to include student preparation for the accepted certification examinations that constitute the industry standard for entry-level computer technicians (the IC3 and A+ computer literacy exams). ITA staff will continue to follow the first graduating cohort of ITA students as they enter college in fall 2004 and will provide local support to those ITA alumni who will be entering UW-Madison.

Section 4: List of Featured Programs

These are a few examples of particularly strong programs at DoIT that are tied to the strategic plan priorities and should be considered for inclusion in the University’s annual report, Wisconsin Week features, or other communications efforts.

Wisconsin Educational and Research Optical Cyberinfrastructure (WEROC) Initiative: DoIT is involved in initiatives at the campus, state, regional, and national levels all aimed at ensuring that Wisconsin citizens reap the full educational and economic benefits made possible by next-generation high-speed networks devoted to research and learning. DoIT is working in collaboration with the UW System to build a UW System-wide “Next Generation Network,” linking all the institutions within the System to one another and to Internet2, the national advanced research network.
Information Technology Academy (ITA) Program – In spring 2004, DoIT’s Information Technology Academic Program, which prepares high school students from under-represented demographic groups in the Madison area for competitive university admissions, graduated its inaugural cohort of sixty students. All ITA graduates will attend two-year and four-year post-secondary institutions, and eight of our ITA students received a full tuition scholarship to attend UW-Madison.
Web Accessibility Policy Development – DoIT is developing accessible electronic resources and serving as a model for policy makers nationwide to emulate. In January 2004, the National Association of College and University Business Officers recognized DoIT as a leader in areas of Web accessibility policy development and increased access to the Web. An article in the January 2004 issue of Business Officer Magazine, "Accessible Technology: Opening Doors for Disabled Students" by Diana Oblinger and Laura Ruby, concludes that “because of the collaborative work done by the Web Accessibility Committee at UW-Madison in the past two years, ‘an inclusive e-culture is developing’ on campus.” (http://www.nacubo.org/x2074.xml).
ResearchChannel Initiative -- The University’s membership in the ResearchChannel (made possible through a joint effort of the Graduate School and DoIT) gives UW-Madison researchers the chance to communicate their research to a broad public audience. Unlike public television affiliates, the ResearchChannel offers researchers editorial control over their own content and guarantees distribution of that content to a global audience of television subscribers and high-speed Internet users. During 2003-04, four UW-Madison-produced programs premiered on the ResearchChannel broadcast channel and were also streamed (“Webcast”) live over the Internet. In fall 2004, ResearchChannel will premiere “UW-Madison’s Undergraduate Symposium 2004,” a program highlighting the exceptional research and service learning opportunities that the University offers its undergraduates.
Streaming Media Showcase -- This past year, DoIT funded the development of an informational Web site project dedicated to the uses of streaming media technology in instruction. The Web site, which is scheduled for completion by December 2004, attracted an additional $50,000 in funding from AT&T.
Learn@UW -- In fall 2003, UW-Madison launched the Learn@UW course management system, which allows instructors to use the Web to offer their course materials, to quiz students, and track grades. DoIT provides Learn@UW course implementation, hosting, and local support for UW-Madison, while also providing centralized support and hosting services for all other campuses in the UW System.
My UW-Madison Portal -- DoIT continues to collaborate with campus-wide advisory groups to enable convenient, round-the-clock, Web-based access to campus services and information through the My UW-Madison portal. This year, online availability of My UW-Madison exceeded operational goals at 99.95%, and detailed plans were made for integrating the existing functionality of My UW-Madison with the newly selected second-generation portal infrastructure, the open-source product known as uPortal.
WI-PHIN (Health Alert Network) -- DoIT continues to play a key role in Wisconsin’s public health infrastructure revitalization program. Over the last year, DoIT developed and released the latest version of the Health Alert Network portal and a new broadcast messaging system. In addition, DoIT began work on a cornerstone of the public health infrastructure, the state’s implementation of the national disease surveillance system.