Welcome to the second edition of IT Matters, the newsletter about Washington community and technical college technology initiatives.
IT Matters aims to provide regular updates on major technology initiatives, plans and issues in our system. Current topics include:
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Re-hosting, led by the Center for Information Services (CIS)
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Development of new applications and the introduction of business process analysis: the Competitive Advantage Reclamation (CAR) projects
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Collaborative research and development projects managed by the Information Technology Planning Group (ITPG)
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Development of a system technology plan by the Technology Transformation Task Force
Taken as a group, these and other information and educational technology related efforts hold a common focus: the needs of users — students, faculty, staff, community members and business owners.
Past editions can be found online.
Technology Transformation Taskforce:
Visioning the Future
The Technology Transformation Taskforce is writing a technology plan that will make recommendations on how our community and technical colleges use technology to support 21st century learning spaces, student services and administrative applications.
The primary goals of the taskforce are to: (1) build the case for support and funding, (2) do long-term planning to provide equitable and affordable access to technologies to support students’ learning throughout the college system, and (3) create flexible and sustainable system technology architecture, governance and funding models.
What is in the draft technology plan?
The technology plan is organized around goals, strategies and actions. Its contents continue to evolve as groups of Task Force co-authors edit the following sections.
GOAL ONE: Increase educational capacity and effectiveness with shared resources
Strategy 1: Provide equitable access to enterprise, system-wide educational and administrative infrastructure so all system colleges have access to a complete suite of teaching and learning tools and support services to maintain anytime/anywhere learning spaces.
Strategy 2: Develop a culture of sharing and receiving. Adopt evolving models of content-sharing and knowledge-dissemination to provide all Washington students with affordable access to a global curriculum.
GOAL TWO: Expand access and increase student success
Strategy 1: Provide 24/7/365 system-wide online student services and administrative tools to increase customer service, recruitment and retention outcomes that are focused on improving student success.
Strategy 2: Support student success by mining data to make better decisions. Data analytics, enabled by quality administrative infrastructure, provide colleges information to make adjustments and improve learning outcomes.
GOAL THREE: Develop a culture of rapid, constant change and continuous improvement
Strategy 1: Support pilot projects that explore, test, provide access to, and advise colleges on significant emerging learning technologies and trends that affect learning.
Strategy 2: Support innovation wherever it occurs to meet local community needs and create pioneering system technology solutions.
GOAL FOUR: Provide comprehensive professional development
Strategy 1: Provide opportunities for faculty, staff and students to learn, collaborate, and share best practices around 21st century pedagogies and learning technologies.
GOAL FIVE: Establish modern enterprise, administrative solutions
Strategy 1: Assemble efficient and effective system wide administrative solutions
Strategy 2: Move from application development to need-based solutions provider
GOAL SIX: Improve physical network and computing infrastructure
Strategy 1: Provide local college technology infrastructure and resources to support on-campus student learning.
See the complete draft technology plan on the Technology Task Force web page.
Timeline
The timeline for development of the technology plan aligns with the State Board’s budget planning process, with a completion deadline of April 2008. The Taskforce is actively collecting feedback through system commission and council meetings, the presidents and other groups. Students and faculty have been surveyed and interviewed to learn, among other things, how they want to use educational technologies, what online support services they want, and their preferred modes of receiving technology training.
How do I learn more?
Detailed timelines, presentations, membership lists, the technology plan draft and more can be found on the Technology Task Force web page.
If you have questions or ideas, contact Cable Green, SBCTC eLearning Director.
Technology Governance Structure Report
A group representing various constituencies has met since October to develop a recommendation to the WACTC presidents and the State Board as to the governance structure of technology, specifically, the Center for Information Services (CIS).
Participants are Charlie Earl, Mary Alice Grobins, Cable Green and Jan Yoshiwara from the SBCTC; David Borofsky, Bates Technical College; Gerald Pumphrey, South Puget Sound Community College; Jim Walton, Centralia College; Russ Beard, Big Bend Community College; Chris Handley, CIS; Al Spence, Seattle Community Colleges; and Bill Storms, Walla Walla Community College.
The group expresses concern expressed about the growing difficulty with the governance structure of the CIS Executive Committee and Board of Directors. When the structure was developed in the 1990s, technology was very different.
Technology moves at a fast pace. Expecting college presidents to manage the technology functions within CIS is difficult at best. Today, more effective and efficient decision-making and leadership processes are needed. Considerable discussion has centered on the common and divergent needs of teaching and learning versus administrative systems.
While the committee has looked at a number of models and discussed different ways to either change the current structure or recommend an entirely different management organization for CIS, no decisions have been reached at this time. A recommendation for WACTC presidents’ input will be ready in time for their April meeting.
New CIS Interim Executive Director
The CIS Executive Board appointed an Interim Executive Director for the Center of Information Services (CIS).
Chris Handley has been appointed as the interim director for CIS for four to six months until a permanent replacement is hired through a national search.
Handley has been consulting on several projects for the community and technical colleges over the last year. He has been a key participant in the Technology Transformation Taskforce in developing a Technology Vision for the colleges. Additionally, Handley has strong technology leadership experience in Higher Education. Chris was formerly the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Stanford University and led Stanford through many of the changes that the community and technical colleges face today. Additionally, he has directed large software implementations at many universities in the Unites States and Canada.
During his appointment at CIS, he will focus on the following areas:
1) Managing and resourcing the independent assessment of the Re-Hosting Project
2) Working with the Re-Hosting Contractor and CIS personnel to implement a go-forward plan for the project
3) Structuring CIS to match the future technology needs of the community and technical college system
4) Communicating change to the community and technical colleges
Re-Hosting: Project Progress and Looking Forward
Project progress
Software the colleges use to manage personnel, student and financial information currently runs on older, outdated systems. The re-hosting project’s primary goal is to make the necessary changes to these applications so they can run on more current Microsoft Windows-based servers. This requires significant coding changes and comprehensive testing to ensure the changes haven’t negatively affected the software’s functionality.
That comprehensive testing is organized into several phases with a final phase involving end-users at the colleges. The project has currently accomplished all the necessary coding changes so it can run on Windows servers. The first phase of testing is approximately 85% complete and CIS staff is learning how the changed software works and how to support it. The overall project is currently planned to be completed by the end of this year.
Looking forward
CIS is getting a much better sense of how the re-hosting project is proceeding. Those insights led to some concerns, so CIS hired a systems architect to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the overall system and identify any risks or issues that might arise in the system.
This more comprehensive view led to an architectural risk assessment of the system. The assessment identified several risks which have resulted in the CIS, colleges, and State Board leadership pursuing a project-wide risk assessment to be performed by an experienced and impartial outside vendor.
The assessment will be overseen by a panel of experienced business and technology representatives from the colleges, DIS and State Board experts, and other representatives to determine the best path to take with re-hosting given the risks. The assessment will begin soon after a vendor is selected and, once started, is expected to take a couple of months to complete.
In the meantime, CIS continues to work on re-hosting while the assessment is being performed. More information will be provided as we get it, so stay tuned.
Learn more at the Re-Hosting Project website.
Information Technology Planning Group Update
The Information Technology Planning Group has met throughout the fall and winter to review Collaborative Development Projects, get briefed on CIS’ re-hosting and CAR projects, and discuss technology issues affecting the colleges and the system.
There are seven collaborative projects underway with development proceeding in each as follows:
Simplified Sign-On (SSO): Simplified Sign-On is intended to provide an easy method for staff and students to log in to web-based applications/processes. The basic idea is to allow students and staff to login as few times as possible into SSO compliant applications. The project intends to create a turn-key solution to be installed and supported by staff to be hired at CIS. The solution is intended to be installed into each colleges’ computing environment and configured to work with their authentication process for faculty, staff and students. This may or may not use student/staff ID numbers.
Most colleges use some sort of network account identifier for staff and some for students, and the project should interface with a college’s preferred authentication processes. The solution has been at least partly funded by the Legislature with some one-time funding and some recurring annual funding. SSO is intended to be made as easy on the colleges as possible by providing central support from CIS. Both open source and commercial products are being considered, and there may need to be some hardware purchases by the colleges.
Purchasing: An integrated purchasing system will provide automated access for ordering, tracking and receiving purchases. The RFP is being reissued and will be released March 7.
Online Advising: Under the guidance of chair Rick MacLennan, Olympic College, and with input from HECB, the UW and the SBCTC, the project is developing standards and guidelines for an integrated advising process that would provide streamlined, seamless information from K-12 to the four year schools. There has been considerable legislative interest expressed in this project and development effort is needed to analyze the open source and vendor solutions available.
Time and Attendance: Dave Halverstadt, Grays Harbor College, is heading the committee looking at in-house and vendor-provided solutions to automate tracking and capture of employee time and attendance. Work on the functional requirements is almost complete.
Course Management System Review: This project is approaching completion and the research information gathered will be disseminated. Faculty and staff are now testing multiple course management products and will advise the project team, led by Marc Lentini, Highline Community College, about the strengths and weaknesses of the products available on the market. A decision will be made by the CMS project team and a contract written by the end of the academic year. WashingtonOnline (WAOL) will use the new contract and all two-year and four-year Washington colleges and universities will have the option to purchase off the contract.
Electronic Application (for employment): This project seeks to streamline the recruitment process—from both an employer and applicant perspective—and align colleges’ strategic initiatives and goals for recruitment and retention of a diverse staff. The electronic application process has the ability to reduce risks/liability and establish a consistent, reliable method for recruitment and reporting processes. Work has been completed on the functional requirements and the team anticipates releasing an RFP this spring. Many colleges have already identified funding to purchase the selected product and there is much anticipation of quick improvements in the application process.
E-Mail Retention: Revised federal rules set aggressive timelines for discovery of electronic information, such as email, and strict penalties for destruction of evidence. In case of a lawsuit, a college could be required to search back-up tapes, desktop files and legacy systems to find information deleted in the absence of a good-faith retention policy. Manual e-Discovery searches can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
Two efforts are underway for this project. The technical analysis and functional requirements have been gathered. Pricing has been estimated and the release of the RFP is pending further discussion about funding. The committee is pursuing identification of the applicable policy framework for this area, so that all colleges are aware of the implications of the changes in the federal court’s rules of procedure.
Detailed information on the status of each of these projects can be found online.
CAR Project: Driven to Innovate
After a series of workshops facilitated by consultant Chris Handley and attended by 40 stakeholders from across the system, in March 2007, the CIS Executive Committee decided the community and technical college system needed to design a new way to develop applications.
Our college system has clearly lost its technological competitive advantage in the educational marketplace and needs to get back in the driver’s seat. As a result, the Competitive Advantage Reclamation (CAR) project was launched in April 2007 by the CIS Executive Committee.
CAR has three core activities to redesign and rethink how technology solutions are provided to the system:
Application Development: Develop four or five student-facing applications to be implemented and ready for use when we migrate to the re-hosted platform.
Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR): Initiate a system-wide practice of using business process analysis for re-engineering existing system applications. The admissions module of the Student Management System was chosen as the pilot for this activity.
CIS Post Re-Hosting: Conduct analysis on CIS as an organization and make recommendations on what CIS should look like in the post-rehosting world.
Based on input from the Information Technology Planning Group for the colleges, and the Technology Transformation Taskforce, four applications have been identified for development.
Details on the progress of each of the three core activities are as follows:
Application development status
All four projects are in various states of completion. Teams either have been formed or are being formed around each of the four projects.
Dianna Sadlouskos has been contracted as product manager and started working for CIS in November. She will be primarily responsible for Online Searchable Catalog and the Statewide Portal System projects, but as those get up to speed she will coordinate Student Relationship Management.
Online Searchable Catalog will allow catalogs and quarterly schedules to be searched by current and prospective students. Users will be able to search catalogs and schedules at all 34 community and technical colleges by looking at an individual college or all of the colleges together. In the future, this will tie students and other users into an educational planning and/or online advising tool. This application should have the flexibility for the SBCTC to approve new programs and for colleges to create course outlines online. It will also support an application interface that gives colleges the flexibility to export electronic data to their print format of choice.
STATUS: The project is finishing its design process and filling out the necessary resources to have the front-end or phase one ready to pilot in late May or early June.
Electronic Funds Dispersal will allow colleges to disperse funds, such as financial aid awards, to the recipient’s bank of choice. In the end, a college should be able to choose whether or not they ever want to print a check again.
STATUS: The project is ready for release of an RFP. The State Treasurer’s office has agreed to run that RFP for us, which is a huge advantage as we are seeking a banking relationship and the State Treasurer has the expertise to make sure we get this right.
The Statewide Portal System project will develop a deployment package to assist a college in successfully establishing infrastructure needed to support a truly scalable portal solution. This solution will be based on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) technology. MOSS represents a foundation that, once in place, can be the framework for countless applications and web modules to be accessed. This platform would immediately make available a collaborative environment that will be used by students, faculty and staff. Currently there are nationwide efforts in motion to develop and distribute, at no cost, many solutions that will run on this foundation that include ePortfolios, grading systems and business intelligent dashboards for up-to-the-minute data analysis.
Finally, as the Simplified Sign-On project moves forward, it could be used to allow for cross-college authentication between portals, thus opening the door for student collaboration across the state regardless of which college he/she is enrolled. MOSS can also be a platform to embed the CIS administrative application, creating a single interface for all to work from.
STATUS: The Statewide Portal System team is in the final stages of writing its business analysis draft and will have that available for colleges to evaluate their readiness in deploying their portal infrastructure. Pilot colleges have been identified and are poised to deploy prior to July.
Student Relationship Management (SRM) is a proposed project seeking an application to assist the marketing, relationship management and retention needs of the college system. It will also be integrated with our Student Management System (SMS) application for a seamless experience for both the students and the college. The use of an SRM application will allow a college to identify and maintain contact with individuals from the time they inquire as prospective students, throughout their educational career and throughout their lifetime.
This project will involve the analysis of the many products on the marketplace. Following this analysis, an RFP will be issued for a contract with an SRM vendor. Upon securing a contract, we will form a development team to write the necessary interfaces for integration with the SMS application. The integration will involve the ability to take the information gathered by the SRM application and input that data to appropriate modules within SMS.
STATUS: After the Online Searchable Catalog and the Statewide Portal System projects are underway, Sadlouskos will coordinate Student Relationship Management.
As the CAR projects move forward there will be a need for subject matter experts all along the way. If you have interested in participating in any of these projects, please contact Dianna Sadlouskos.
Business process re-Engineering (BPR)
BPR is a management approach aimed at improving efficiency and effectiveness of processes within and across organizations. The key to BPR is for organizations to document and analyze their business processes and determine key areas to re-engineer. These key areas are identified through a scoring system that helps to quantify the process improvement areas that will provide the greatest benefit to the organization.
The activity to conduct the process analysis for re-engineering the Admissions module began in October 2007. A BPR facilitator/trainer has been contracted and a team of college representatives has been formed to conduct the analysis. A preliminary report was delivered to the CIS Executive Committee at their March 2008 meeting.
The team will work to gather information about the processes our colleges use when admitting a student and looks for areas to improve. Stay tuned for more details.
CIS re-organization assessment status
An external consultant has been working with a team comprised of CIS staff. They have been analyzing what CIS does and what CIS should do to better support the technology needs of the colleges, faculty, staff and students. A report is expected from this team in early March.
For more information, contact Russ Beard, CAR project sponsor.
