Information Technology Strategic Plan

Transcription

1 Information Technology Strategic Plan

2 Contents Executive Summary... 1 IT Governance... 3 History... 3 Executive Council... 4 Steering Committee... 4 Sustainable Funding... 5 Prioritizing Institutional Needs... 5 Community Partnerships... 5 Partnerships Opportunities with Local Businesses... 6 Partnership Opportunities with Local K-12 School Districts... 6 Partnerships with other New Jersey Higher Education Institutions... 6 Reduced Costs through Efficiency Opportunities... 7 IT Infrastructure Sustain and Improve... 8 Sustaining Existing Systems... 8 Workstations and Servers... 8 Network Infrastructure... 9 Physical Plant... 9 Improve Existing Systems Workstations and Servers Network Infrastructure Physical Plant Faculty and Staff Professional Development Productivity Training Instructional Training Learning Management System Training and Digital Course Material Experimental Instructional Methods Support Student Enrollment and Success Initiatives Student Enrollment Student Success through Technology Distance Learning and Learning Management Systems... 19

3 Improving Institution-wide Utilization of WebStudy Improving Distance Learning Courses and Materials IT Efficiencies on College operations Identify ERP-Related Process Inefficiencies Identify Business Processes for Automation Identify Poor or Missing IT Policies Efficiency Progress Monitoring Emerging IT Trends Mobile and Portable Devices Cataloging and making Digital Media Available Appendix A... i

4 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan Executive Summary Technology advances are a driving force which affects every aspect of a modern college institution. From streamlining business processes, to student processing and self-help services to the educational environment, technology advances provide the means by which the College can more efficiently operate, grant students real-time access to the information they require and implement state of the art classroom and distance learning instruction. Like any other infrastructure however, technology advancements cannot be put in place and forgotten about. Technology requires ongoing maintenance to keep running at peak efficiency. Staff and faculty need to be trained on new systems, policies and procedures. Students will need assistance to make the most of the student facing technologies. College executive leadership will also need to continually review the potential versus realized benefits of a system, and regularly examine upcoming technologies and steer the IT policies to best meet the College s needs based on current trends and available funding. This strategic plan outlines the current state of the IT infrastructure at Sussex County Community College. It identifies the College s existing strengths and deficiencies, and offers a roadmap through 2017 for the correction of existing issues, as well as institutional technology goals for that timeframe. In April, 2011 the College decided to outsource its Information Technology leadership out to All-In-One Network Solutions for numerous reasons. In the year and a half in which All-In-One has been handling the College s IT needs, there have been numerous issues discovered. While many were technical in nature, the largest issues are related to IT leadership and how it integrated with the College leadership and institutional and student needs. Technology was treated as a black box, something that few people were allowed to know anything about, and which a small number of people were able to dictate College IT needs, instead of asking the majority of the College what they required. The issues created by this methodology can be grouped into the following three categories: Lack of an IT oversight committee Lack of future budgetary planning Lack of interest in continued improvement in existing systems College executive leadership has seen first-hand the results of these failed policies, and recognize the need to correct the issues if the College is to continue to be relevant to education both within the county and beyond in the future. President Mazur has set ambitious targets for distance learning, online classes and technology inclusion within the College. In order to support those targets, the College needs to learn from past mistakes, and correct policies what have artificially limited the College in the past. It is within that context that this document was drafted. The single largest issue which this plan covers is the lack of oversight over all College technology. Technology throughout the College is spread around through several different departments, with no committee to ensure that they all are working towards the College s strategic goals. Different departments have different priorities and methods to achieve their individual goals. This results in many different departments reinventing infrastructure and systems on their own, while wasting valuable

5 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan funds recreating functionality which exists in another department. This lack of oversight also extends to technology funding. Departments can purchase equipment against their individual budgets, and then it becomes the IT department s responsibility to support and maintain those purchases, without any prior input of knowledge of the purchase. With proper oversight of all technology related purchases and initiatives, the College can ensure no only that funding is properly allocated, and that sustained funding will be available for the upkeep of all systems and initiatives, but it may be possible to offset some of the costs through local partnerships or grants. Without strong IT governance, none of these benefits are possible. Once there is a strong, centralized IT governance structure in place, it is possible to ensure the other two categories identified above are resolved. The IT governance committee s job will be to review all proposed IT initiatives and purchases, and ensure that there is also a plan submitted for the ongoing upkeep required by the purchase. This includes ongoing maintenance of the system, plans for funding a refresh cycle, or plans on decommissioning the equipment at the end of its useful lifespan. Without planning for the entire cost of a piece of equipment or an initiative, it will be impossible to properly maintain it in the future. The initial cost is just a piece of the overall all total cost, and the full lifecycle cost will need to be planned for and budgeted prior to any new purchases. Only by budgeting for the total cost, will the College be able to sustain its IT infrastructure into the future. The final category covered by the strategic plan covers the lack of interest in continued improvements in various segments of the College once a system has been put into place. No system is static; they are always changing based on technology, regulation changes or policy and personnel changes within the institution. Historically, once a system was put in, the will to improve it and to continue training the staff and faculty who utilize it all but disappeared. The College has a huge investment in not only its systems, but also in its personnel. Staff and faculty need ongoing training as systems change and improve over time. There needs to be training when systems change so that they are utilized to their full potential. Lack of training and continued education of staff and faculty not only costs the College large sums in additional payroll required to achieve a desired outcome, it also reduces the level of services which can be provided to the students. Automation and process improvements coordinated with technology can streamline processes, reducing the amount of manual intervention required, and streamlining the work required by students just to attend the College, register for classes, or gain access to class materials. The College s IT infrastructure and systems have technical and strategic challenges over the next several years to overcome. Ensuring increasingly scarce funds are appropriately spent, systems intelligently maintained and expanded, and that policies and systems are improved in tandem will enable the College to overcome the technical challenges. Ensuring ongoing support and training for College personnel will ensure the strategic challenges can be met into the future. Only by covering both types of challenges will the College IT infrastructure be up to the requirements of future needs.

6 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan IT Governance The days when a single systems administrator made all IT decisions affecting an entire institution have long since passed. Strong IT Governance structures are critical to running a lean and efficient IT department, while providing all necessary services required by the College s master plan at an affordable cost. Without such a structure, it is difficult to ensure that all areas of operations are adequate to support future needs and trends. It also leads to unnecessary costs which may not line up with the College s master plan. To address these needs, the College has developed a two tier governance structure. History In April of 2011 the decision was made to outsource the College s IT leadership to All-In-One Network Solutions. There were numerous reasons behind the change in IT management, but the primary reason was the internal cost and the level of service delivered by College IT management and networking staff, and the results the College received from that team. At the end of 2010 All-In-One Network Solutions came in and performed an audit, and found numerous issues, both technical and departmental, which were documented in a report for the College. After being brought onboard, All-In-One Network Solutions continued to find issues throughout the College, including numerous unnecessary expenditures consuming large portions of the IT operating budget. It was also discovered that various parts of what should have been IT (such as the College website, management of the distance learning portal, etc) were in fact not under the domain of Information Technology. Based on all the findings, All- In-One Network Solutions recommended that a governance committee be setup to ensure any funds allocated to IT are allocated efficiently, and contribute towards the College s long term strategic plan. Prior to the Fall 2012 semester, the College had no IT governance committee. All IT decisions were made by the Executive Director of Information Technology. While the best efforts were made to satisfy budget constraints with computing and technology needs, a clear vision as to how those purchases fit into the College s master plan was missing. Historically equipment was purchased with little thought to a replacement plan, or additional incurred costs in future years spent maintaining the system. Funds were not allocated based on the priorities of the institution; they were spent fixing what broke that year. Information Technology was run as a purely reactive department instead of a well-planned, proactive department. In addition to the lack of IT planning, the IT Department does not oversee all aspects of IT at the College. The website falls under the Marketing department. Classroom technology, projectors and SMARTboards fall under the Media department. The College s security camera system (which is entirely dependent on the IT infrastructure) falls under Maintenance. The Distance Learning (LMS) system falls under Academics. The lack of centralized control of these facets of IT has caused different departments to spend large amounts of money re-implementing systems which exist elsewhere. This lack of coordination and various departments tendency to re-implement their own systems (which already exist elsewhere) has cost the College untold sums over the years. By making an overarching committee to review all these areas, the College will reduce costs, streamline services, and ensure that every decision made contributes in a positive way to the College s master plan.

7 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan Starting in the Fall of 2012, IT governance committees will be formed to address the above issues. All aspects related to IT, regardless of which department they involve will be channeled through the IT Steering committee to ensure all efforts line up with current and future needs and the College s master plan, and then will be escalated to the Executive Council for final approval. Utilizing this method, all IT expenditures become transparent, and any proposed changes can be examined for unanticipated effects by all departments at the College prior to submittal for final approval to the Executive committee. Using this two tiered approach to IT governance, the College hopes to be able to implement strong controls on all IT related projects and initiatives. It gives the College the ability ensure improvements are not only cost effective, but also have a beneficial impact directly or indirectly on the student population, both in the near term, as well as long term. It gives multiple departments on campus input into IT decisions, providing them with a voice to ensure improvements will be able to support future needs of specific departments. Executive Council The Executive Council will be made up of individuals from Operations, Information Technology and the Business and Academics offices. This small group will be tasked with verifying submissions from the IT Steering Committee be cost effective, practical to implement, and aligned with the College s master plan. The Executive Council will also be able to task the Steering Committee with developing programs to match future technology needs. The Executive Council will maintain the ultimate responsibility to ensure that all approved technology plans fit within the appropriate budget allocations. It will also ensure that any plan further develops the IT infrastructure and systems towards the College s master plan, and that sustainability has been factored into the plan and the budget. Steering Committee The Steering committee is planned to be an extensive, inclusive committee with the ability to comment on and further develop technology plans before sending to the Executive Council for approval. Technology plans can originate from the Information Technology department, or any member department within the Steering Committee with a technology need. Once reviewed by the Steering Committee plans can be developed, refined, rejected or approved and escalated to the Executive Council for final approval. The Steering committee will include an individual representing each department at the College. The purpose of the Steering committee will be to take recommendations by IT (or other departments), and evolve them into a plan that is both feasible as well as which aligns with the College s master plan. By including every department there will be multiple different viewpoints, suggestions and concerns expressed over issues and plans. This will ensure that nothing is implemented within a vacuum, and that nothing benefits one department but adversely affects another.

8 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan Sustainable Funding Given the tightening budgets faced by Higher Education throughout the country, maximizing the return on every dollar spent is crucial. While IT infrastructure can be inherently expensive, it is the foundation on which all the other departments on campus operate. Optimizing efficiencies and minimizing costs are just one step which must be taken to keep IT sustainable into the future. Funds priorities need to be established to ensure the funds that are available are used to the maximum benefit of the College. It will also be necessary to look to the community for partnerships or other opportunities which could directly or indirectly benefit both the College and surrounding community. Prioritizing Institutional Needs Historically, institutional needs have been defined by the Executive Director of IT with little or no input from other departments. It was the discretion of a sole individual to steer the College s IT plan, which may or may not have aligned with the College s master plan. This has caused numerous problems in the past, and was one of the primary reasons to develop the IT governance plan. With the new IT governance in place, it will be up to the Steering Committee to recommend, and the Executive Council to approve the institutional priorities for IT, with the input of all the departments involved. The committees will evaluate the ongoing needs of the College, staff, faculty and students and future trends and recommend a prioritized list of actions to be taken. This will ensure that all departments are receiving the necessary technology and support to perform their daily tasks and ensure the students have the most up to date technology possible. This will replace the current methods which are more reactionary with an improved preventative plan based on available funding. Any new IT project which will be approved by the IT governance committees must contain provisions dedicated to the ongoing maintenance and replacement of any equipment placed into service, or an appropriate decommissioning plan. This way the TCO of the overall plan is known, and both the maintenance costs and future replacement costs can be properly budgeted for. This will ensure that all new technology on campus will have an expected useful lifetime, and will have a replacement or retirement plan in place prior to its initial implementation. Community Partnerships Community partnerships will be an increasingly important aspect to the College s IT infrastructure. Looking at local, community or regional shared service opportunities as well as public-private partnerships could positively impact the College on numerous fronts, including reducing costs as well as expanding the College s regional influence, and increasing its regional enrollment. Given Sussex County s relative remoteness compared to the rest of the counties in New Jersey, there are certain challenges that all educational institutions within the county experience. Local businesses also experience similar issues. There is no reason why common needs cannot be pooled, and a more efficient shared service model be employed with like entities throughout the county if such a partnership will result in improved services or reduced costs, or both. Opportunities need to be examined whenever possible. The risk of missed opportunities is too costly for the College to continue to absorb.

9 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan Partnerships Opportunities with Local Businesses The College maintains numerous active relationships with local donor businesses. Those businesses contribute to the College foundation scholarships, or contributes to the College foundation and requests the funds be appropriated in certain ways, or towards specific interests of the donor business. Some of those donations are directed towards technology improvements at the College. Utilizing those funds the College has started building state of the art business facilities. With further donations anticipated in the future, the College will be working with the local businesses to continue developing and expanding the technology base (both hardware and software) to continue strengthening the business department and its facilities which are available to be used by other classes and majors as well. Partnership Opportunities with Local K-12 School Districts One of the most far reaching goals the College has over the next few years is to build an educational network in Sussex County, incorporating all the K-12 school districts. This network is strategically important for many reasons, including reduced costs through shared services, community outreach and improvements made available to local K-12 schools, as well as making the College a more visible entity within the county, helping to drive enrollment at the College. The College will be leveraging shared services, common platforms and pooling resources from multiple institutions into a centralized location which benefits all involved. The educational network is envisioned as a hub and spoke configuration throughout the local towns, with a spoke connected to the College. Over that connection, the College will be able to offer internet and NJEdge services, telephone services, video conferencing, and access to all media hosted at the College. The member K-12 institutions will have full bandwidth access to one another (which could be provided over leased circuits or over dedicated fiber running at gigabit or higher speeds). The College shall maintain the primary, redundant internet connections, connections to NJEdge, as well as (optionally) edge network devices such as shared web filters, spam filters, etc. (with the individual districts being in control over their settings on the device). There is also a goal to offer services such as colocation, disaster recovery and business continuity hosting services, utilizing the College s upgraded facilities, with the costs being subsidized by the participating K-12 schools. The College has already had preliminary discussions with several of the K-12 districts in the county, and there is interest in the proposal. The K-12 schools are looking for cost savings, improved bandwidth and services, as well as the possibility for a county wide purchasing consortium for IT equipment. There remains additional data required from the K-12 districts so that engineering estimates can be completed then vendors and providers can provide appropriately engineered quotes, and a final financial analysis can be performed. This will be an ongoing, high priority project within the College over the next few years. Partnerships with other New Jersey Higher Education Institutions Some of the basis for creating a county wide educational network is to be able to provide services from NJEdge, the New Jersey Higher Education consortium, to the K-12 school districts. NJEdge was created in 1997 to support higher education broadband an infrastructure needs. It has evolved since then to cover broadband needs including Internet2, phone services, video conferencing, distance learning,

10 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan emergency notification systems, streaming video services and video on demand, as well as consortium pricing on key infrastructure needs which are purchased by a majority of the educational institutions in the state. NJEdge is currently expanding to include many K-12 school districts who want to take advantage of the many cost savings NJEdge provides. NJEdge has committed itself to supporting the College s effort to expand NJEdge services throughout Sussex County, with the College being the central connection point for those services. NJEdge partners with Verizon throughout the state. Since Verizon does not have any infrastructure in Sussex County, NJEdge services are currently unavailable. The College is investigating ways to make the service available within the county. The current plan is to have point to point circuits between the College in Newton, and NJEdge s data center in Newark, NJ. Without partnering with local K-12 districts the costs of bringing this service up to Sussex County would be prohibitive. With partnerships, the College will be able to bring the service into the county, and feed the services to the local K-12 districts, who otherwise would not have had access to all the features NJEdge offers. Not only will this reduce the College s costs over time, it will offer benefits to the local school districts as well, with reduced costs and increased services. Reduced Costs through Efficiency Opportunities Capital expenses spent on IT initiatives are only part of the Total Cost of Ownership. Ongoing maintenance and software or equipment life expectancy also greatly affect the TCO. Improved efficiencies do not only equate to a lower initial cost, but can include a higher up front cost but with a lower maintenance cost, longer life expectancy, or a reduction in staff required to perform a given task. As with community partnerships, all options should be evaluated over the entire anticipated lifetime of the initiative to determine any true cost reductions. The College has historically stayed true to what has worked in the past, given a level of comfort with the way things had been done. There was little desire to stray too far out of that historical comfort zone. While IT remained in that comfort zone, technology passed the College by. Thin clients, server virtualization, workstation virtualization, disaster recovery and business continuity advances were untrusted, and shunned. By passing on maturing technology, the College has been strapped with additional maintenance costs which could have been significantly reduced. These and other similar technologies, once proven in the enterprise, should be deployed and leveraged to their full potential to either reduce costs, or to increase services at the same funding level. The College needs to ensure any replacement plans examine currently available technology before spending funds on similar technology and equipment at the end if it s useful life. This will drive down the continued cost of maintenance and refresh costs in the future.

11 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan IT Infrastructure Sustain and Improve The IT infrastructure makes up the backbone of the College. Every single department on campus relies on that infrastructure on a daily basis. There is no greater boost to efficiency campus wide then ensuring the IT infrastructure is operating at peak performance. That performance requires yearly maintenance to maintain peak efficiency; older equipment must be phased out in a controlled manor before it fails. Trends need to be identified so the infrastructure can be adapted or expanded to support those trends, and not fail under the load. The College has spent a large amount of money on its infrastructure, but has not continued with yearly maintenance to keep the systems gradually refreshing so that no equipment exceeds its useful lifespan. The College is now in the position of having over 50% of its desktops and 90% of its network equipment beyond it s useful life (for desktops), or beyond it s manufacturers End of Life support (networking equipment). Sustaining Existing Systems There are numerous systems on campus which can be grouped into one of three broad groups, with roughly different life expectancies per group. Each of these groups plays a critical role in IT operations, and the College cannot function properly if any of them are not maintained correctly. The groups broadly are identified as Workstations and Servers, with an average of a five year lifespan, Network Infrastructure with an average lifespan of five to ten years, and Physical Plant, which involves electrical and facilities related to IT, which can have between a ten and twenty year average lifespan or more. Proper life cycle management of all three of these groups is essential to maintaining the College s infrastructure for staff, faculty and students alike. Workstations and Servers Workstations and servers are the most visible portion of the IT infrastructure. These are used by faculty, staff and students on a daily basis. Previously there was no proper life cycle plan on this equipment. Workstations were replaced whenever funding became available. Servers were replaced as the old ones were about the fail. A proper life cycle plan needs to be put into place to phase out older machines, and replace them with new ones. This plan needs to conform with projected budgets, and align with the College s master plan. A viable lifespan for most workstations and servers is five years. Some can last longer with memory upgrades, or replacement hardware, but for budgetary planning purposes it will need to be assumed that the lifespan is only five years. Since there was no replacement plan, in the summer of 2011, a full 51% of the PCs and Workstations on campus were more than five years old, with some reaching twelve years old. Many of these systems were still in use in College computer labs and offices. These old systems continually had failing parts which needed to be repaired because they were still in production. The College budgeted to replace approximately 120 workstations in 2012, which is less than 18% of the total workstations on campus. With those new systems in place, the percentage of PCs in production which are more than five years old has been reduced to 41% (this number takes into account the number of PCs increasing in age another year, passing the five year threshold). This is a good first step towards a sustained replacement plan for existing equipment, but the funding required to replace one fifth of the workstations and servers on campus each year cannot be counted on due to reduced state and county funding, and a

12 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan decrease in College enrollment. The College will have to look to technology improvements such as virtualization in order to achieve the required replacement plans given the estimated budgets over the next several years. Even with technology improvements, it may not be possible to put the College into an appropriate refresh cycle in the next five years without additional funding due to the age of the majority of equipment on campus. Network Infrastructure The College s network infrastructure has been neglected, as the workstations and servers have been. Since they were installed and little though was given to the network switching equipment again. This lack of planning now leaves the College with network infrastructure equipment which will no longer be supported by the manufacturer by the end of Since network equipment usually has a ten year usable lifespan, the life cycle plan will cover a ten year refresh period, where virtually all of the equipment will be approaching that age at the start of the new refresh cycle. The College s core network infrastructure consists primarily of Nortel BayStack 470 switches. The switches are no longer manufactured, manufacturer support for software has already ended, and the manufacturer s support of the hardware will expire on November 30 th, The College has been purchasing these switches used, even after the End of Support notification was given by Nortel at the end of 2010 and with no replacement plan in place, other than to stock several spare switches. The College will have to develop a life cycle plan for all networking equipment, over a ten year span. Primary MDF closets in each building will be given priority, since the rest of the building relies on the equipment in those closets to connect the building to the rest of the campus. The plan will then have to spread out to the remaining IDF closets in each building in subsequent years. There will also have to be a reserve in the IT operating budget large enough to absorb the replacement costs of several switches a year in case switches fail before their refresh can be performed (provided the College does not have any spare, operational switches which have already been refreshed which are viable spare units). This is more of a concern the first year or two of the refresh cycle, because after that the College should have a supply of old, but still functioning switches which can be deployed as needed until the full refresh cycle can be completed. Physical Plant The physical infrastructure upon which IT relies heavily is the power and cooling systems throughout the College. Physical plant infrastructure such as Computer Room Air Conditioners, A/C compressors, electrical distribution systems all have a much longer life expectancy then both workstations and network equipment. Much of this equipment, with proper maintenance can run for twenty years or more. The largest challenge IT faces with the physical plan infrastructure is not it failing, but exceeding available power and cooling capacities. Over time power loads increase as services offered increased. Where more power is consumed, there must be additional cooling, which also consumes additional power. Stressing either system can have an adverse effect on IT equipment (brownouts or power spikes can damage electronics, and heat can damage electrical components). Maintenance is required to keep the cooling systems working properly

13 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan and efficiently, and to verify that no electrical circuits become overloaded over time, and that power load is properly balanced on the supply conductors feeding the panels. Proper maintenance plans are not in place to ensure clean power delivery to the IT equipment, or to ensure the A/C units are operating properly and maintained on a regular basis. Maintenance is performed on an as-needed basis which puts the infrastructure at risk for failures and unplanned outages. While not strictly part of the IT strategic plan, IT must ensure that facilities creates a plan to properly maintain, and perform preventative maintenance on all IT related equipment and service feeds. Improve Existing Systems Workstations and Servers Even with sustained funding, the College does not currently have the budget to maintain a five year replacement cycle on all workstations and servers as currently deployed. The solution to that will be virtualization. Since a many of the College s servers were out of warranty and had failing hardware, virtualization has been heavily utilized in the last year. There have been over twenty servers consolidated on hardware which cost the College the same as performing a straight replacement of ten servers, with additional capacity to spare for future virtualization needs. In addition, additional server blades now cost the College about 40% less than equivalent stand-alone servers. Combining server and desktop virtualization with thin clients (which have a ten year life expectancy) will greatly reduce the ongoing costs related to workstation replacement. Currently a new, top end server is capable of running fifty to sixty or more virtual workstations, at the cost of less than ten standalone workstations. Thin clients will need to be purchased for each station however. On the first refresh cycle, there is little cost advantage to virtual workstations and thin clients, but since the thin clients last over ten years and have no moving parts, the second refresh cycle s cost is only the cost of a server (which will be capable of running many more virtual workstations then the previous server was capable of). This is an example of leveraging existing technology to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership in future years to manageable budgetary levels. A further cost savings is how easy it is to provision a virtual workstation. If a lab required new software, it can be automatically deployed to the entire lab, or to the entire College in a matter of minutes, from a central location. This ability will relieve the IT department from having to manually redeploy images to machines every summer or when required software changes during the course of the year. This will free up IT support staff to work on other issues sooner, and increase their overall response time for all other issues. Year Budgeted Amount Budgeted Items 2013 $105, Virtual Desktops and 3 Server Blades 2014 $211, Virtual Desktops, DR Blade Server Chassis, 6 Server Blades 2015 $248, Virtual Desktops and 2 Server Blades

14 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan Network Infrastructure Over the next several years the College will be upgrading or expanding numerous parts of the IT infrastructure backbone. The College upgraded the fiber backbone between all buildings over the summer of Taking advantage of the improved connectivity and bandwidth made available by the new fiber, the College has plans to upgrade network switches, the current phone system, the current security system, expand existing wireless access and supporting increased wireless device densities throughout the College. The College is also planning on expanding the software infrastructure to enable linking various separate systems in use at the College together with Single Sign On technologies. Due to the age of the majority of the switches on campus, and given the intent to roll out an upgrade VoIP phone system, the current network switches will be phased out, with replacement switches supporting Power over Ethernet (PoE). PoE will be required prior to upgrading the College s phone system. Due to the number of switches on campus, this will be a phased approach, with MDF closets in each building being upgraded first, followed by other IDF closets in order of the determined phone rollout. The new switches (at least in the MDF closets) will be upgradable to take full advantage of the new fiber cabling the College had installed in the summer of Once the new switches have been installed, the College will begin to look at the feasibility of replaceing the current phone system with a VoIP system. A newer system, aside from all the new features which will be provided to the users, will take advantage of the new campus fiber backbone for data instead of existing, older copper cables between all buildings. A newer phone system will also allow the College to streamline the services feeding the existing phone system and significantly reduce the College s monthly phone bills. Also taking advantage of the newly installed fiber will be a new campus wide security system, incorporating audio and video feeds, and emergency phones. The new system, which is currently in the design phase, could also include door card access systems, and building access systems. It will expand coverage to many areas which are not covered by the current system. This will improve safety for all faculty, staff and students within buildings, in common areas and in parking lots. This upgrade will also rely on upgraded MDF closet switches in each building to take full advantage of the upgraded fiber throughout campus. Finally, the campus wide wireless network will be upgrades. A new wireless controller will be installed which will allow for the addition of a sufficient number of access points to cover not only the internal buildings, but many of the centralized outdoor areas in which students tend to congregate. The updated controller will also support enough access points to support the increased wireless device densities which will occur as more students bring wireless phones, tablets and laptops to the College. Increased wireless coverage and the ability to handle increased device densities will be required before any wide spread Bring Your Own Device initiative can be possible. Software upgrades currently in the planning stages include campus wide Single Sign On capability. Currently students log onto College computers with one account. Then they log into their portal with

15 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan another account. Webmail is a third account, the Webstudy distance learning application a fourth account, and Rave is a fifth account. Merging those systems together with a single sign on and password reset portal will provide a single account the students must remember to access all College related sites. IT will also streamline support for students who forget a password. Currently different departments provide password reset assistance for different systems, so students must try several different departments to locate the correct one to reset the password in question, or must visit all departments to change all their passwords. This is inefficient from an IT standpoint, and disruptive to the students, who may only have several minutes between a class to take care of an issue. Year Budgeted Amount Budgeted Items 2013 $ Replacement core network switch in B Building (Relocating current core switch to A Building DR center) New Wireless LAN Controller and 25 Wireless Access Points Replacement primary switch for E Building Replacement primary switch for L Building 2014 $71,967 Replacement Primary switch for D Building 15 additional Wireless Access Points 2015 $88,461 Power over Ethernet switch blades for Buildings D, L, E Power over Ethernet edge switches for Buildings A, B/C, D, L, E 15 additional Wireless Access Points Physical Plant The College currently has two plans related to physical plant in varying stages of completion. The first project is a major upgrade to the primary data center in B Building. The second plan is the creation of a smaller, Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity data center in A building. When complete, these two plans will allow the College to continue to operate in the event of a total loss of the B/C Building, containing the primary data center. Lesser issues to the building will be handled through redundancy within B Building. The existing primary data center has long doubled as an office for networking staff. Cooling was insufficient, as was power. A project will be going out to bid in the Fall of 2012 to upgrade the available power coming into B/C Building and upgrading the building s main switch gear. From there, a distribution panel dedicated to IT will be installed, feeding all the servers, Computer Room Air Conditioners, compressors and networking equipment. As part of the bid, the College is also looking at the feasibility of a backup generator, large enough to power the data center, phone system, networking equipment, and administrative offices indefinitely. To protect College operations in the event of a fire or catastrophic loss of B Building, the College also plans on creating a backup data center in A Building. A Building is on a different power feed from JCP&L. In the Halloween snowstorm of 2011, the entire campus was without power for three days, except for A Building, which never lost power. Due to the separate electrical feed in A Building, the College has chosen that location for its backup data center. When the College fiber backbone was rebuilt in summer

16 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan of 2012, A Building and B Building were directly wired to each other building on campus, so in the event B Building was lost, operations could continue from A Building. Tentative plans call for a small data center to house critical College systems required to maintain operations, the necessary cooling and UPS power to maintain those systems, and a generator to keep the data center operational if necessary. Further plans will be developed in the future as funding becomes available. Year Budgeted Amount Budgeted Items 2013 $ $105,000 Disaster Recovery Site UPS Disaster Recovery Site A/C Upgrade 2015 $0

17 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan Faculty and Staff Professional Development One of IT s primary responsibilities, aside from implementation and support of a reliable IT infrastructure, is enabling users to properly take advantage of all the College systems have to offer. For faculty and staff, this includes software and systems used as teaching aids in classrooms. The College has in the past had IT user groups to discuss and instruct users on the latest hardware and software available. While beneficial, these groups were not attended by a majority of the faculty and staff body. A goal over the next several years is to extend training and support to all faculty and staff in IT and related systems. The more efficient in transferring knowledge the faculty become, the more the students could potentially get out of a class experience. The overall categories which IT will help support in the future broadly fall into two categories, Productivity training and Instructional training. Productivity training focuses primarily on staff, and includes things such as report writing, cross department training, and ERP system training. The Instructional training category is for faculty and adjuncts, and covers technology usable in the classroom or software used in preparing for the classroom. This includes technologies such as the Learning Management System, SMARTboards, projectors and PowerPoint, as well as technical support for experimental instruction methods which instructors may want assistance in. Productivity Training Productivity training encompasses the business software in use at the College. This is primarily the Jenzabar CX platform. The purpose of this training will be to make the end users more efficient in their daily jobs, and to try to remove them from the vacuum of their department and let the user see how their job affects other areas of the College. President Mazur has identified cross department training as a necessity in certain offices, with the specific goal of streamlining student applications and enrollment. A key area to train staff on will be the upgraded report writing tool, Cognos. The College will upgrade Cognos to the latest version in the Fall of This will enable more end users to create the reports they need on their own, instead of having to rely on the IT department to create a custom report for them. It will also allow publishing of created reports to others within the department, and allow the user running the report to tailor specifics of the reports at run time, such as date ranges. Features such as this will allow staff to reduce the amount of data manipulation done outside the system in time consuming and error prone processes. Instructional Training Instructional training is focused on technology usable by faculty or adjunct instructors in the classroom, or in preparation for the classroom. This includes technology available in the classrooms, such as SMARTboards, projectors, PowerPoint slides, etc. The goal of instructional training is to provide the faculty and adjuncts relevant training to make the most with the technology available in the classrooms on campus. Instructional training goes beyond just technology in the classroom. It covers training on the College s Learning Management System, WebStudy, as well as assistance for instructors looking to push the technology envelope and do things which have not been done within the College yet. In cases like that,

18 Sussex County Community College Information Technology Strategic Plan IT will support the instructor in every way possible to give the instructor the best opportunity to develop modern and cutting edge instructional practices. Learning Management System Training and Digital Course Material When first implemented, Learning Management Systems were relegated to distance learning classes. Over time instructors have learned the potential such systems bring to even in-person classes. While the College has slowly been pushing the LMS into in-person classes, the majority of in-person classes have little more than a syllabus online. By offering assistance and training in the functionality of the LMS, the IT Department is trying education the instructors on what others are doing with the LMS system, even for in-person classes. One of the realities of having a large adjunct population at the College is that many also teach at other institutions each semester. Because many institutions have different LMS systems, the adjuncts may not have the time to build multiple, high quality course shells for each class at each institution. In an effort to increase usage of the LMS, the College will be investigating standards based course shell import and export files as a requirement for any future LMS system. Such standardized files will allow faculty and adjuncts to create a course shell in one LMS system, export it, and re-import into another system. The hope is that this will make creating a shell once and importing it at multiple locations a viable option for adjuncts and drive further adoption of the LMS system. Many of the instructors either do not understand how to work within the LMS system, are intimidated by it, or just choose not to use it. When the system was first implemented last year, originally faculty and adjunct staff were given one-on-one training in the system, but the school year started prior to everyone receiving the appropriate training. The remainder of the instructors were shown a brief presentation on how the LMS worked, and what was capable in it. By providing follow up training and support, the College s goal is to leverage the LMS as much as possible, driving more and more materials online for the students. This will make the material available to the students enrolled in the class 24 hours a day, seven days a week from any device with an internet connection. Experimental Instructional Methods Support While many of the faculty and adjunct staff utilize technology to some extent, some will try to push the technology and the instruction to new heights. The College fully supports advancing teaching methodologies with a proven benefit to students. Since instruction of this type rarely has a set of requirements to go along with it, the IT Department will facilitate as best as possible any request by an instructor under these circumstances. While not all requests will be able to be granted, IT will accommodate as best as possible, given the available resources. This experimental instructional support could evolve into a group related to how to best utilize technology in the classroom, made up of faculty and adjunct members. While IT does not get involved in instructional materials or methods, IT would be happy to contribute to such a group looking to expand and maximize the use of technology in the classroom.