Problem: Much of the available information about the services that IFAS IT provides is disorganized and out of date. This frustrates end-users and leads to reduced productivity.
Recommendation: Current documentation should be reviewed, updated and improved. The IT website should be reorganized with a focus on what the end-user needs. It should provide clear information on what is offered and what is planned as technologies and needs evolve. This documentation should be kept current and well publicized.
Problem: Current core IT services, including IFAS IT (IFASDOM), and its e-mail, web and file-sharing are based on older technology Microsoft is retiring in stages. Moving to newer technologies is not optional, but rather a question of how and when, but IFAS IT is not currently well positioned to address this. Those within IFAS IT have not always had the time, money, and manpower to develop, evaluate, and deploy the newer technologies. Rather, their efforts have been involved in growing and maintaining the current system.
These newer technologies are not easily merged with
centralized systems after-the-fact, so careful planning must be involved, and
IFAS IT has also been waiting for a UF-level initiative it could join. Because the newer technologies do offer
improved services though, some units have begun to develop such services on
their own. The cost to IFAS of delaying
could far exceed the cost of dedicating the resources necessary for success.
Recommendation: IFAS IT must persistently develop and
maintain expertise in new technologies if it is to continue to provide and
improve necessary IT services. Considerable resources must be allocated to this
issue, separate from those involved in providing and maintaining current
services.
Problem: Most needs for IT services involve varying degrees of resource
sharing and resource blocking, i.e. security.
Computing in a university environment often involves issues of who
controls what at what level and how they can interact with each other, and the
current NT 4.0 systems give us very limited tools for dealing with those
issues.
Recommendation: Microsoft’s implementation of
directory services called Active Directory seems to be the natural progression
and the best model for dealing with IFAS’s computing needs. Clearly too, IFAS knows it must plan to
interact with UF-level IT services as they are developed to provide the
broadest possible resource sharing and to avoid unnecessary duplication of
efforts.
Having standardized on Microsoft products that are now
considerably out-of-date, it seems necessary to move sooner rather than later
to Microsoft’s newer technology solutions particularly since they will offer
better tools for meeting the organizational computing needs of IFAS.
Towards this end, the ICC wants to begin to work with IT to develop a
plan for the implementation of Active Directory within IFAS. This plan could
include technical details, a cost-benefit analysis, proposed budget, and
implementation schedule as needed.