Thank you all for your continued support and assistance in the university's GMail migration, and specifically for your consultation and input on the policy regarding auto-forwarding to non-SJSU accounts. This message is to inform you that we have changed the policy and removed the restriction against users setting auto-forwarding of inbound university GMail traffic to other email accounts. As you are aware, this has long been a topic of debate and controversy, and I spent significant time consulting with all of you, plus many others, from late Fall through early Spring about the auto-forward policy. Ultimately, with the consent of the President's Cabinet, I informed the Senate Executive Committee a few weeks ago that we would set the policy to permit auto-forwarding once the GMail migration is complete.
We have essentially reached that milestone at this point, with only a few pockets of departmental/shared mailboxes still under development. As a result, the technical constraint that was used to implement the restriction was removed over the past weekend and users may now set an auto-forward routing in their university GMail account. Obviously, the university encourages users not to use this feature and to conduct their university business on university systems, but there is ample justification to allow them to do so if they so desire.
On a related note, you have probably heard or seen in the news the significant debate and challenges across the country recently regarding the status of email privacy, academic freedom, and application of the Freedom of Information Act and corresponding state legislation in the area of public employees' email communications. Of relevance to our particular issue on auto-forwarding, I wanted to point out that one part of the debate and controversy extends to state employees' conducting work-related activities through personal email accounts and whether those accounts are subject to open-records laws. At best, it's safe to say the matter is unsettled, evolving and will be a controversial issue for some time, and I just wanted to provide you a heads up as it relates to our email activities.
Thanks again for all your terrific work in completing this major systems transition.
Bill Nance
Showing posts with label CIO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIO. Show all posts
Friday, April 8, 2011
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Posted on behalf of Interim President Don Kassing.
San José State University has operated for many years with a distributed model for governance and oversight of information technology (IT), with separate IT units in various divisions coordinating to deliver IT services to the university community. Responsibilities for managing IT throughout the university range in scope from centralized infrastructure units to divisional applications and services to departmental desktop support groups.
It has become apparent that to bring an enterprise-level perspective and approach to the governance and oversight of IT across the university, we need to revise and restructure some aspects of this current governance model. However, a complete overhaul of the university’s IT administration is not warranted, as many aspects of IT within our current model are working well. What is needed is an approach that enables successful innovative, integrated and collaborative IT oversight across the university, while retaining aspects that meet needs more locally at divisional, departmental and user levels.Towards that end, we are revising the university’s IT governance structure in three ways, which will accrue benefits from having a Chief Information Officer who serves as the university’s IT visionary and strategist, but also retain operational benefits of localized delivery at the unit level. The first two IT governance modifications involve the creation of multi-divisional bodies that are charged with responsibility for coordinating the university’s collaborative IT efforts. The third modification is the reassignment of the University Technology Services (UTS) unit, under the direction of the CIO, into the Academic Affairs Division where it can align more closely with the university’s mission of instruction, research, and student success.
Information Technology Governing Board
The IT Governing Board is the senior-most body, reporting to the President, and is responsible for long-term visioning, planning, prioritizing, and overall coordination of IT across the university. The IT Governing Board is advisory to the President of San José State University and is responsible for the overall guidance, integration, coordination, and prioritization of information technology activities in the university. The Board will work in collaboration with the President’s Cabinet, the Chief Information Officer, the Academic Senate, and other constituents throughout the university to develop long-term visions and strategic directions for information technology planning, prioritization, and utilization across the university.
The IT Governing Board is comprised of senior members of the university appointed by the President to represent key roles or responsibilities in different areas of the university. Members are functional or business unit leaders, not IT managers, and are expected to contribute to the Board’s oversight responsibilities through leadership and guidance from an enterprise-wide business process and functional need perspective; membership on the board may not be delegated.
Membership:
Chief of Staff, Office of the President (Chair)Vice Provost and Chief Information Officer
Chair or Vice-Chair of the Academic Senate
President or Vice President, Associated Students
Chair of the Institutional Data Management Council
Division Designees. Initial designated appointments are:
- Academic Affairs: Vice Provost for Academic Administration and Personnel
- Administration & Finance: AVP for Finance and Administrative Technology
- Student Affairs: AVP for Enrollment Services
- University Advancement: AVP for Advancement Operations
- Athletics: Senior Associate Athletics Director and Chief Operating Officer
Information Technology Management Council
The IT Management Council is the operational management body responsible for the development, implementation, maintenance, and on-going operations of the university’s many different IT-related projects and systems. The IT Management Council is a group of senior IT managers and staff from across the university, convened to work collaboratively in managing information technology throughout the institution. Utilizing an enterprise-wide perspective, the council is responsible for coordinating and directing activities that are required to manage and/or support university IT resources. These activities include developing, implementing, and maintaining IT systems (both centralized and distributed), as well as providing support and training for IT users across the entire range of university IT resources – from central administrative systems down to the desktop user level.
Membership:
Vice Provost and Chief Information Officer (Chair)
Information Security Officer, University Technology Services
Senior Director for Academic Technology, Academic Affairs
Senior Director for Administrative Systems, Administration and Finance
Senior Director of Information Technology, Student Affairs
University Advancement Designee
Information Technology Manager, University Library
Two Technical Support Staff
Reassignment of CIO/University Technology Services to Academic Affairs Division
Finally, the third key element of the university’s new IT governance model is the reassignment of the University Technology Services unit, currently a division headed by the Vice President for Information Technology and CIO, to the Academic Affairs Division under the oversight of the Provost. The former Vice President position will be retitled Vice Provost and Chief Information Officer and within Academic Affairs will continue to supervise the UTS organization and staff. The CIO position will report to the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs.
The reassignment of UTS to Academic Affairs will help align the university’s central infrastructure services, such as campus networking, and enterprise-wide voice, data, and information security functions, with the instructional services currently provided by Academic Technology. These services include classroom technologies, campus audio/video distribution, student and faculty helpdesk, and web services. This alignment is expected to enhance development and delivery of innovative educational technologies, support for the university’s learning management tools, and services for faculty development in areas of technology related to teaching and learning.
IT units in the Administration & Finance and Student Affairs Divisions will remain intact, for the most part, in their current divisional structures and reporting relationships. Administration & Finance will continue to house the university’s enterprise administrative systems, which include the university’s Common Management System (CMS) implementations for Finance, Human Resources, and Student Administration applications through PeopleSoft. This unit also provides administrative applications programming support and database administration, security support, and CMS training and helpdesk support. Similarly, the Student Affairs IT unit will continue to support numerous student-oriented systems such as CSUMentor and NextSteps communications, which interface closely with CMS applications such as MySJSU and CMS-Student, and also internal operational systems, databases, and desktop users in units such as Health Services, Counseling and other Student Affairs groups.
In closing, moving the CIO and UTS into Academic Affairs will enable significantly closer alignment of the university’s IT vision, strategy, and planning with our core mission of instruction, research, and student success. Important IT functions such as learning management systems, classroom technologies, computing lab facilities, and student, faculty and staff support can be integrated and coordinated more effectively and more comprehensively as an institution. Moreover, new developments in the ever-changing technology landscape, such as mobile devices, wireless capabilities, social media, and cloud computing applications can be brought into the university’s learning environments more quickly and more effectively with closer ties between the core IT function and instructional activities.
The migration and integration of the UTS function into Academic Affairs will be planned and carried out gradually through the Spring 2011 semester, with the official organizational reassignment planned for July 1, 2011. During this transition period, Bill Nance, the President’s Chief of Staff and current Interim CIO, will continue to serve in his dual role and help coordinate the transition. Per university policy for academic administrators, the Academic Affairs Division will conduct a search during the Spring 2011 semester to appoint a permanent CIO for the unit.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
By: Bill Nance
This message is a comprehensive update regarding the university’s on-going migration to a single-platform email system using Google’s Gmail. I have shared much of the information in this message with many of you through various distribution channels, including forums, committees, and individual emails and conversations over the past couple of months. However, I have waited until now to send this broadcast message in order to have a fuller understanding of the many issues that have arisen, answers to questions that arise most frequently, and clearer updates as to the status and deadlines for the campus migration.
To date, campus techs have migrated nearly 2,500 users to their Gmail accounts – including users from essentially every college or department across campus, and from every legacy email platform in operation. On behalf of the university and the University Technology Services (UTS) Gmail team, I want to personally thank the technical support staff for their continuing efforts in this area. I held an open forum about the Gmail migration with the campus techs very early on following my appointment as Interim CIO, because a successful campus migration depends significantly on their personal involvement and commitment to this massive effort. “Thank you” doesn’t begin to express our appreciation for their contributions, but it’s certainly deserved.
GOALS
Our migration timeframe and goals for the next few months have been clarified in the past month and were recently reaffirmed by the President’s Cabinet. As noted with the techs in August, the strong encouragement and expectation is to have most user accounts migrated by the end of the Fall 2010 semester. Realistically, the goal is to complete at least 4,000 – and hopefully closer to 5,000 – by the end of December, out of roughly 6,500 total accounts. A number of faculty and staff have indicated that it would be problematic to migrate their email during the semester, especially towards the end of the semester, so it is reasonable to defer those migrations until after Finals Week or, more likely, into January. The downside in these instances is that the migration will need to occur during the Winter Break, perhaps in the faculty member’s absence. There is no easy solution to that dilemma, but at least there is flexibility if needed.
DEADLINES
Specific deadlines for migrating accounts have been somewhat fluid over the past few months as the migration has ramped up, techs and users have been trained, and questions and issues have been sorted out. Deadlines have now been clarified for the particular systems from which user accounts are migrated. The general target for all migrations is the end of January 2011, with some systems able to extend slightly into the Spring 2011 semester. All migrations are to be completed by March 31, 2011.
- Users who are migrating from the university’s central Lotus Notes system have a firm deadline of January 31, 2011 due to server licensing constraints. We simply must be off of the Notes servers promptly. Users who are migrating from the university’s UNIX system (i.e., “email.sjsu.edu”) have a January 31 target, but may extend until February 28, 2011 if necessary.
- Users who are migrating from other local email servers such as college or departmental systems should similarly be targeting the January 31 timeline. If they need to roll over into the early Spring semester for reasons such as migrating new hires or returning faculty, February 28, 2011 can be considered the official deadline. Meeting this February 28 deadline for distributed systems provides the university and the campus techs the month of March to do final exception migrations and various clean-up activities prior to the overall project deadline of March 31, 2011.
While the above deadlines focus on various email systems, we recognize and encourage the practice of migrating accounts by departments or user groups rather than by particular types of other email systems. Automated tools are available that can help your group’s tech support person expedite the migration of user groups.
ANSWERS TO KEY QUESTIONS
Not surprisingly, many issues and questions about the university’s Gmail migration have arisen over the past year or so, ranging from philosophical to operational to highly technical. UTS staff have developed volumes of documentation for this process, much of it targeted originally at supporting the campus techs for the technical migration process and at early adopter users who have been willing to share their experiences and feedback to pave the way for the majority of the campus. Based on this feedback and shared learning on the part of all involved, UTS has developed several user-support websites such as “Getting Started” and “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQs) for Gmail and other Google Apps. They can be found at the following links:
- Google Apps (http://uts.sjsu.edu/CIO/google-apps)
- FAQs (https://sites.google.com/a/sjsu.edu/gapps-faq/)
Legacy Addresses
The question that has come up most often, by far, is “After I convert to the first.last@sjsu.edu email address, will I still be able to receive messages that are sent to my previous email address?” The answer is YES, absolutely. A system that handles legacy addresses for the next two years is already in operation. In addition, the university is nearing completion of a follow-on system that will provide an enduring solution for legacy addresses that will allow users to maintain up to two other inbound email addresses essentially for perpetuity as long as they remain authorized users in the university’s Gmail account system.
Auto-Forwarding to External Email System
Much discussion has occurred regarding the practice of enabling or disabling an “auto-forward” mechanism in the university’s Gmail implementation. While auto-forwarding is available technically within Gmail, the university’s position is that it is not going to be enabled due to a combination of legal and university identity rationales. Without going into legal complexities, the essential point is that when messages are auto-forwarded to external (i.e., non-SJSU) personal or business email accounts, the university’s confirmation that an item can be considered an official university message is compromised. Auto-forwarding represents a fundamental difference from a user who accesses their SJSU account and hits the “Forward” button to send the message to that same external account, because the latter approach can be confirmed that the intended recipient did indeed access the message. Furthermore, it retains the original message in the user’s university account. Closely related, the SJSU identity is retained in the message addressing trail, regardless of where or how often it is forwarded and/or replied to.
Department Accounts Using Groups
A third common question involves the creation of Gmail accounts for organizational units such as colleges or departments using the Gmail “Groups” feature. The way the Gmail system implementation at SJSU works for user logins (aka “authentication”) maps specific Gmail accounts to individual users through their TowerID. Since departments are not individuals and therefore do not have TowerIDs, the only practical solution to create department mailboxes is through the use of Google Groups. Though some operational/technical differences do exist in the use of groups compared to a true mailbox, for the most part the user experience does not have to be significantly different. One characteristic that many users find useful is that the group setup allows the department mail to be routed to their individual mailbox, alleviating the need to monitor multiple inboxes.
The groups feature in general is designed for “true” groups such as clubs or organizations who wish to establish tools for communicating with their membership. That feature is available in SJSU’s Gmail system in a self-service mode, where group accounts can be created and have a “-groups” suffix appended to the requested group name. Department accounts for official organizational units, however, can be created without the use of the “-groups” suffix. To be established, these accounts require manual support by UTS staff and require a degree of review relative to campus naming guidelines and user authorization before approval and creation. But to be clear, the university policy does enable the creation of department groups, without the “-group” suffix, for organizational units that are formally part of the university’s organizational structure.
CLOSING
On behalf of UTS and the university, I want to thank all of you for your understanding and contributions to this extraordinary migration effort. It is long and arduous, but long overdue as well. Please visit the UTS blog site where this message and subsequent updates will be posted about Gmail, calendaring, Google Apps, and other related topics as we move forward. The blog can be found at:
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