Rutgers University
Computing Services

Annual Report

1999 / 2000

 

 

     A. Staffing - Promotions, New Hires.

     B. Commitment to Excellence.

     C. Public Awareness and External Relations.

     A. University Directorates.

         1. Administrative Computing Services.

         2. University Computing Services.

         3. University Telecommunications.

     B. Computing Services.

         1. Camden Computing Services.

         2. New Brunswick Computing Services.

         3. Newark Computing Services.

     C. RUNet 2000.

     A. The Office of Information Technology Strategic Goals.

         1. Computing and Information Technology.

         2. Community Service and Support.

         3. Customer Service and Support.

         4. Connectivity.

         5. Communication.

     B. University Directorates.

         1. Administrative Computing Services.

         2. Telecommunications Division.

     C. Campus Computing Services.

         3. Camden Computing Services.

         4. New Brunswick Computing Services.

         5. Newark Computing Services.

     D. RUNet 2000.

Organizational Chart

 

 

 

Executive Summary

The 1999-2000 academic and fiscal year presented a full range of challenges, opportunities, and changes for employees throughout the Office of Information Technology (OIT). Challenges ranged from the Y2K transition and the implementation of web-based services to the architecture of a new and robust communications infrastructure and the smooth delivery of data, software, and academic computing systems to 60,000 customers -- every day. Opportunities included the production of operational efficiencies, enhanced services and facilities, expanded internal and external communications, and the development of new partnerships with government and corporate entities. Change and professional growth permeated the entire organization throughout the year, as OIT's Commitment to Excellence and expectations regarding performance standards continued to play a significant role in the culture of the organization. Further, comprehensive analyses of job descriptions, staffing patterns, and work requirements supported the need for a major internal reorganization, position adjustments, and a 10 percent increase in the number of full-time employees to accommodate the growing demand for services and the implementation of new initiatives. Major highlights of the past year's activities follow.

Year 2000

Rutgers Computing Services Divisions in Camden (CCS), Newark (NCS), and New Brunswick (NBCS), and the University Telecommunications Division (TD) provided critical testing, support, and safeguards for the Year 2000 project, and Administrative Computing Services (ACS) successfully converted the university's administrative applications. These efforts led to a smooth transition into the 21st century and to ACS' receipt of the President's Award for Excellence. This was the first time that an entire university division received this honor.

Administrative Computing Services (ACS)

ACS also developed and delivered a number of web-based initiatives to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of university processes and to empower faculty, staff and students, as well as prospective students, with the ability to manage an array of transactions online. Web-based services initiated in FY 2000 include the following:

• Student self-service registration was implemented university-wide for fall 2000 registration. At its peak in April, the web-based registration site was accessed more than 128,000 times.
• Rutgers Online Directory, implemented in August 1999, provides an up-to-date web-information display with search and maintenance features for students, faculty and staff. Average directory access is 120,000 times a month.
• ARTSYS, a web-based community college transfer course articulation program, empowers students with the information they need to plan for the easy transfer of community college courses to Rutgers.
• Online class rosters provide faculty with up-to-date access to the email addresses of students enrolled in particular courses. This facilitates faculty/student communication, improves student access to course materials, and provides electronic data for monitoring student progress.
• Web access to student financial information was implemented in fall 1999. This service enables students to view and manage their financial accounts -- tuition, fees, payments, financial aid awards, refunds, remission information -- through a secure web process, instead of going to a cashier's office or waiting for a periodic mailing.
• Home address updates may now be made online. Prior to this web-based option, students had to fill-out a paper form and take it to the Registrar to make address changes.
• Web-based Course Analysis System (CAS) provides academic departments and administrative and institutional research offices with accurate and timely data collection and validation processes. Prior to CAS implementation, such data collection and analysis required extensive data entry at the department level and in centralized data entry units, which frequently led to inaccuracies and wasted effort.

In addition, ACS supported the university's pay-for-performance program with a client-server-based application that facilitated departmental entries of bonus awards and base pay increases. The application also contained University Human Resources management components for analysis and reporting, and back-end processing was provided to enable electronic data feeds into the payroll system for base salary increases, bonus adjustments, and retroactive salary calculations. This new process eliminated the inefficient, manual data entries required in previous years.

As ACS organized resources to meet FY 2000 challenges, it became apparent that some restructuring was necessary. At mid-year, two associate directors were promoted to new director-level positions: (1) Director of Production Services and Technical Support and (2) Director of Application Development and Data Management.

Also during the 1999-2000 academic year, OIT led a significant up-front planning effort to replace the university's administrative systems. This work resulted in the Rutgers' Integrated Administrative System (IAS), a multi-year enterprise resource planning (ERP) project that will substitute the institution's core financial, human resource, purchasing, budgeting, and payroll systems with web-based applications. The following major strides were made this year to prepare the university for IAS implementation:

• In-depth investigations and site visits were conducted to study a variety of ERP implementations at other universities.
• Application user group conferences were attended to gather ERP information from other organizations.
• Bid responses for the ERP software and implementation consulting were analyzed and findings were presented to the university's senior administration and members of the Board of Governors.
• Numerous presentations occurred throughout the year to review proposed budgets, the ERP planning process, and final recommendations.
• Oracle Corp. was selected as the ERP vendor of choice, and a governance structure was created to include a senior steering committee, a project management committee, and a project director.
• The project team has started an intensive training program on the pertinent software modules, and arrangements have been made for Oracle consultants and an "owners representative" to be onsite during the implementation process.

Telecommunications Division (TD)

In preparation for the increased network responsibilities associated with the construction of a new communications backbone, the Telecommunications Division (TD) implemented an internal reorganization during FY 2000. The reorganization emphasizes functional area responsibilities and customer service, a closer relationship between plant design and plant installation, and a cohesive Network Operations Group that serves the university's three regional campuses.

TD's major accomplishments during 1999-2000 include the following:

• The legacy data network core and seven existing campus backbones were rebuilt. In the upgrade process, redundancy was added, hardware and software variety was decreased, and routing complexity was reduced. The net result is a legacy backbone that is simultaneously faster, simpler, and more robust.
• In collaboration with RUTCOR (Rutgers Center for Operations Research), TD participated as a mock client in a graduate course research project to develop a network traffic analysis tool. Such operations research is used widely by government and industry to solve problems involving complex design and to identify efficiencies.
• TD personnel played a major role in planning for a New Jersey Higher Education Network (NJHEN), evaluating bids from network vendors, and developing a master services agreement. They continue to provide Rutgers' representation on the NJHEN board.
• Working with Cisco Systems, a Tech Day event was organized and presented for Unit Computing Specialists and other interested members of the university community. The program focused on RUNet 2000 and the legacy network.
• As part of the university's outreach to the educational community, custom infrastructure was extended to the Leadership, Education and Partnership (LEAP) Academy, a K-8 charter school in Camden. This infrastructure provides a 100Mbit full-duplex connection to the Rutgers network. Construction of Rutgers network connections to selected educational facilities in Newark is nearing completion.

In addition, TD is responsible for leading the RUNet 2000 construction project, which has made significant progress since the first Authorization to Proceed was signed in April 1999. During the first year of the project, wiring was completed in 12 academic buildings and 27 residence halls on the Busch, College Avenue, Douglass, Livingston, and Newark campuses. Conduit and manhole installation to house the fiber optic network backbone was completed on the Busch and Livingston campuses and was initiated on the Newark campus. Fiber installation began in June on the Busch and Livingston campuses. A process for transitioning academic and administrative buildings to the new network was developed by the RUNet 2000 Interdivisional Task Force and tested in two departments prior to a full scale rollout throughout the university. At the conclusion of the fiscal year, the project was on schedule and within budget. The success of the RUNet 2000 Project to date is due in large part to the cooperation and collaboration of all OIT's divisions and to the wholehearted acceptance and support of the entire university community.

Camden Computing Services (CCS)

Camden Computing Services (CCS) staff provided networking leadership for the RUNet 2000 implementation process on their campus, including significant planning and coordination efforts for outside plant construction for the Business & Science Building and Armitage Hall, and for related departmental moves on campus. CCS also contributed staff time and expertise to the K-12 outreach initiative associated with RUNet 2000, which included a high-speed network connection for the LEAP Academy. In addition, CCS special accomplishments in FY 2000 included the following activities:

• A presentation on "Facilitating Netscape Use in a Public PC Lab" delivered at the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services conference, and follow-up articles in university publications, provided valuable shared experiences with colleagues.
• Fine tuning of instructional support efforts continued with the implementation of a plan for a three-year life cycle of public lab systems in Camden's computer labs.
• The Rutgers-Camden Sociology faculty collaborated with the Teaching Excellence Center in a streaming video project for classroom presentation enhancements.
• Communications with the campus increased through Gleaner articles, email reports to administrators, meetings with departmental representatives, and classroom presentations in the School of Business.

New Brunswick Computing Services (NBCS)

New Brunswick Computing Services (NBCS) placed a special emphasis on enhanced services for departments during the 1999-2000 academic year. Through this ongoing, multi-year project, NBCS will develop strategies and services to help reduce the amount of staff time that departments need for routine tasks. Further, NBCS provided new services in the following critical areas:

• Mechanisms now exist to create official mailing lists based on a variety of criteria. A full set of university-wide email lists were developed this year for use by colleges, departments and administrative offices to send special announcements, weekly bulletins, or official notices that may have previously been distributed through campus mail or the student newspaper.
• A process for departments to use while transitioning to the new network created through the RUNet 2000 construction process was planned and developed.
• Unix support services for departments, including the creation of a support group and online resources for departmental Unix staff, were initiated.
• A more consistent and proactive approach to security was initiated, including the creation of a security and abuse-handling group and an Interdivisional Computer Incident Response Team.
• OIT's responsibilities associated with the PC Purchase Advantage program, including vendor negotiations, ordering and deliveries, were coordinated with other offices to achieve the goals of the program: acquiring standardized, high-quality hardware and software at significantly reduced prices.

NBCS also participated in the significant reorganization of OIT:

• The Computer Store and Computer Repair were moved into NBCS. This move brought together all of the resources needed to support PCs.
• NBCS was divided into two areas, each of which has a new Director. The areas are (1) User and departmental support and PC technology and (2) Central services and Unix technology.

These changes were intended to allow the new directors to focus on small enough areas to make significant progress, and to plan initiatives that address key priorities. The previously existing Director was named University Director and is responsible for providing overall leadership for campus computing, including technical planning and development.

Newark Computing Services (NCS)

FY 2000 activities for Newark Computing Services (NCS) include the following highlights:

• The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) was implemented to assist with the relocation of offices and classrooms into the new Center for Law and Justice (CLJ) building, and for the initial phases of transition from the legacy network to RUNet 2000.
• The Engelhard Computing Labs were renovated and opened, providing 46 state-of-the-art student workstations with workspace for notes, references, and books. Each workstation has access to all of the standard student applications on the Novell servers and the Unix Pegasus server. In addition, the help desk area was renovated to provide a location for operation of the help desk with telephone, email, and walk-in technical support.
• A training program for lab consultants was developed. It includes an orientation to interviewing, hiring, and training; workshops on policies, procedures, and troubleshooting techniques; and Career Services assistance that enables students to post their resumes on-line and search for positions in the Career Services Database on the Internet.
• NCS web pages were redesigned to provide easier access to more complete information. Updates will continue as a regular activity.
• A routine for new students to create their computer accounts when they are on campus for orientation and advising was coordinated with Student Affairs. This provides time for staff members to guide new students through the process and resolve problems that occur immediately.
• A collaborative software application was installed as a pilot in two instructional labs. This application enhances the teaching environment by allowing instructors to remotely control student workstations, project images to any one or to all workstations simultaneously, and help maintain the focus of all students on the same subject. This successful pilot will lead to the installation of the application in most other teaching labs on the Newark Campus.

By any measure this has been a productive year for the Office of Information Technology. The accomplishments during FY 1999-2000 can be attributed to the collaborative work of talented and dedicated staff members in each unit of the organization, the establishment and communication of clear goals and objectives, a commitment to excellence and service, and the wholehearted support of the University's leadership.

The Office of Information Technology

I. Personnel, Administration
and Communication

A. Staffing - Promotions, New Hires

At the conclusion of Fiscal Year 99/00, OIT employed 238 full-time state lines1, 64 auxiliary lines, 133 type 4 employees2, and 527 type 5 employees2. Staff members worked in the following job families:

• Applications Development/Maintenance
• Network Engineers
• Operations/Production
• Systems
• User Services & Support
• Network Technicians
• Management
• Administration & Clerical

Reclassifications were granted for 12 employees, recognizing their increasing capabilities to serve the organization.

64 individuals were hired into the following job families during the fiscal year: 

Number	Area
5	Administration & Clerical
5	Applications Development
5	Management
10	Network Engineers
6	Network Technician
8	Operations/Production
21	Systems
4	User Services & Support

New hires made within Divisions were as follows:

Number	Area
17	ACS
1	Administration
2	Camden
4	Newark
22	NBCS
18	TD

27 positions were unfilled at the conclusion of Fiscal Year 1999/2000. Active recruitment occurred during the fiscal year through:

• RU APS Postings via mail and web site
• National and local newspaper advertising
• Advertisement in computer and management publications
• Posting on technical organization listserves
• Search firms
• Job fairs
• Student training/mentoring
• Referrals
• Postings on the OIT/HR and other organizational web sites

B. Commitment to Excellence

The organization's "Commitment to Excellence" Quality and Communication Improvement initiative resulted in the establishment of six committees, which were charged with gathering and analyzing data, providing recommendations and a course of action based on recommendations and ideas to affect organizational change in a positive way.

Organizational focus for the fiscal year 2000 was on leadership, management and communication improvement. Leadership, management and communication objectives were included in performance standards. Issues were formalized into leadership responsibilities and shared through every level of the organization from directors to front-line staff.

The Commitment to Excellence initiative was a response to the stated needs of employees at all levels within the organization. Following is a summary of the recommendations of each team report and the current status of those recommendations:

Team: Customer Identification and Needs Team

Through focus groups and surveys, learned more about what the University community required of OIT. Provided recommendations for regular contact with constituent groups to maintain a high level of communication and feedback about organizational activities and directions in order to improve services.

Recommendations:

• OIT will volunteer to participate in biennial University-wide survey conducted by OIR
• Schedule focus group meetings to gauge:

Customer concerns

• Faculty, staff, and departments for exchange of issues (annually)
• Partner with campus groups to extend the reach of OIT into the University Community
• Continue existing regular meetings of customer groups for service areas
• Conduct one-on-one meetings with customers

Activities Implemented:

• The New Brunswick Advisory Committee has prepared a draft survey to be reviewed by Computing Services Directors for implementation in September
• OIT personnel actively participated in Campus Open House programs
• Vendor conferences (Cisco, etc.) were coordinated
• Specific group meetings (PC LAN, Linux, etc.) are regularly scheduled
• Modems were added and modem policy is being reviewed
• OIT Services brochure was updated and distributed
• Customer focus group meetings were planned and conducted
• Student satisfaction surveys were taken
• Correspondence and visits to departments and student organizations were initiated to discuss services

Team: Support Strategy Team

Documented the process of user support within OIT. Identified a set of issues with current processes, producing a set of recommendations.

Recommendations:

• Collect systematic data to develop estimates and address problem
• Establish single Help Desk support
• Develop standards for user support

Activities Implemented:

• In the near future NBCS will begin monitoring staff responses to users and reviewing quality of responses regularly
• Divisional collaboration was implemented for the Help Desk
• Lab consultants were trained
• Interdivisional collaboration was emphasized and made a performance evaluation criteria for directors
• PC Purchase Program was planned and implemented
• Help Desk processes were reviewed and modified

Team: Human Resources Team

Focused on the recruiting and retention of qualified individuals into the OIT community. Additionally, worked to ensure Computing Services is well represented in the University-wide orientation for new faculty and staff.

Recommendations:

General

• Contract Mercer Associates to determine level of OIT IT salaries to market
• Increase IT compensation to compare with corporate market in the northeast region of the United States
• Determine whether skill and performance or contribution based compensation should be used
• Improve HR staffing to modify long hours and overlapping responsibilities
• Develop a professional development program
• Define career paths to enable staff to move ahead
• Improve management training to provide good administration
• Streamline recruitment procedures to have vacant positions filled as soon as possible

Recruitment:

• Allow for central funding and appropriate guidelines for recruitment of IT staff
• Prepare training programs for interviewing and search committee practices
• Create procedures and guidelines for on the spot job offers
• Provide for immediate vacation allowance for new hires
• Create a benefits menu to tailor individual benefits
• Offer referral bonuses to staff when an acquaintance is hired on a recommendation from a current staff member
• Take a proactive approach to marketing Rutgers University and OIT as an employer

Retention:

• Provide for IT compensation equity across divisions
• Campaign to foster a sense of community
• Develop an orientation program for new staff
• Develop and implement a formal exit interview process to provide feedback on retention factors

Activities Implemented:

• Mercer Associates were contracted to provide a market compensation analysis
• An IT compensation proposal was submitted to the University administration
• Additional HR staff position was advertised
• A Professional Development budget was implemented
• Staff development has been included as a responsibility within some divisions
• A New Staff Orientation meeting was implemented to familiarize new employees with the organization
• A New Staff website will be implemented shortly
• A OIT HR Website was implemented

Team: Process Inventory Team

Identified high-level processes and the divisions responsible for supporting them, and recommended process improvement priorities.

Recommendations:

• Communication should include

  OIT web pages

  Directory of OIT contacts

  Inter-divisional coordination

• A Help Desk to incorporate computing and telecommunications
• Incorporate a problem tracking system
• Provide effective account administration

Activities Implemented:

• Increased efforts have provided better communication within divisions
• Web page improvements have been made
• Interdivisional team meetings are regularly scheduled
• Help Desk collaboration between divisions is taking place
• Account administration has improved
• Alumni account extensions have been fully implemented to improve service

Team: Communication

Used input from its online and in-person focus groups to provide recommendations for improving communication within the organization.

Recommendations:

Interpersonal:

• The following training has been suggested for staff members:

  Customer service

  Effective meetings

  Managing conflicts

  Quality telephone service

  Effective communication

  Technology selection

  Business and technical writing

• Employ a communication coach to guide the organization in the area of communication
• Provide professional communication conflict resolution/mediation

Divisional:

• Create divisional communication plans
• Provide new service updates
• Encourage staff to attend technical/travel seminars
• Establish `Breakfast/lunch with the divisional director' as a communication channel and to enhance morale
• Provide for the implementation of the organizational mission, vision, and values

Organizational:

• Create an internal `yellow pages' for specific skills/knowledge contacts within OIT
• Establish publications and telephone answering guidelines
• Provide new service updates
• Create an online discussion forum
• Establish `Breakfast/lunch with the executive director' as a communication channel

Community building:

• Plan an organization-wide December holiday party and summer picnic
• Encourage informal organizational get togethers
• Publish a newsy newsletter
• Maintain OIT bulletin boards with organization information and classified ads
• Purchase golf shirts with a OIT logo

Activities Implemented:

• Suggestion Box/Good Idea Awards and `Breakfast w/Exec & Divisional Directors' have been implemented
• Area Updates are circulated to all staff members
• OIT-All meetings are held twice annually
• Informal get-togethers are hosted in New Brunswick by NBCS and TD
• Organizational bulletin boards are being implemented in each building accommodating OIT personnel
• Divisional communication plans have been implemented
• OIT staff website contains the following organizational documents: Accountability reports, the minutes of Directors' & other divisional meetings, Directors' retreat notes, Active CPR qualified list
• New Staff Orientation meetings have been scheduled quarterly and are open to all staff as an informational tool
• Mini development courses have been added to OIT-all meetings which are planned for twice yearly
• Referral lists have been provided on the OIT staff website
• Some campus newsletters now contain OIT information
• The organization is planning to participate in meetings using voice and video conferencing
• The organizational mission, vision and values have been incorporated in performance appraisals and job evaluations
• Meeting minutes are posted to the OIT staff website
• Campus and organization wide activities have been implemented

Team: Performance Indicators

Investigated OIT's existing performance measurements for system performance and service delivery, then identified those that would be used routinely in characterizing system performance. Developed a web-based interface for posting the indicators and a process for collecting the information.

Recommendations:

• Develop web-based indicators of performance measurements categorized at a very high level
• The web environment should focus on the functions of our organization rather than the divisions.
• Performance measurements should summarize at the University level, then be available at the campus level.
• Indicators or measurements displayed should be consistent with previous requests for information from the administration and provide data about resources available in the labs, systems, and the networks of the University.
• Trending information should be provided where appropriate and show a change in services or resources provided over a period of time. This could also be used as an aid in making management decisions.
• Status indicators should be available as an informational aid to users about the resources of the labs, systems and networks and to technicians about the status of the labs, systems and networks.
• The performance indicators should be reached from a clearly described link on the OIT main web page.
• The indicators should be kept current through automated routines or mechanisms to avoid displaying out of date information.

Activities:

A limited number of specific performance indicators have been defined. Organizational web-based vehicle to view new performance indicators is being discussed. A variety of indicators is available on divisional web pages.

C. Public Awareness and External Relations

Computing Services staff and student employees participated in the New Brunswick, Camden and Newark Campus Open House activities this spring. Information about services was disseminated through brochures and conversations with prospective students and their families. Campus computing facilities tours were provided on some campuses.

The Computing Services brochures were revised and distributed to students, faculty, and staff on all campuses. A new growth area brochure, "Connectivity@Rutgers: The Power of Computing," was created and distributed to faculty, staff, and prospective donors. The brochure, with an introduction by President Lawrence, describes Rutgers undertakings to provide seamless integration of computing and connectivity.

Articles about Computing Services and the RUNet 2000 project appeared in the Bergen Record, CMPNet Newsletter, Rutgers Focus, Daily Targum, Star Ledger, Home News Tribune, Black Voice/Carta Latina, Rutgers Gleaner, Rutgers Connections, Courier News, Rutgers Magazine, Asbury Park Press, Tri-State Real Estate Journal, and the Trentonian. WNJN also broadcast news about RUNet 2000 activities. A special Rutgers Focus insert was prepared to inform faculty and staff about the implementation process and annual schedule.

Information about RUNet 2000 was disseminated through the project website and in presentations made by the project director and senior university officers. A communication package including a videotape, door tags, FAQ, and other documents was prepared and distributed to residence life personnel for use in introducing the project to students in affected residence halls.

Both RUNet 2000 and the Rutgers' Integrated Administrative System project were discussed at the April Treasurer's lunch. Michael McKay, Executive Director for Computing and Information Technology, Bruce Fehn, University Controller, and Joseph Sanders, University Director for Telecommunications provided overviews of the projects, and updates of current status.

To better prepare the directors for addressing media questions, all were provided with several hours of media training by a Rutgers faculty consultant who specializes in the mass media.

Legislative staff members representing the offices of New Jersey's U.S. congressional delegation toured Rutgers' information technology (IT) research labs on February 25, 2000, and were briefed on the details of the university's K-12 instructional technology initiatives in Camden, Newark, and New Brunswick.

A second year of federal funding from the U.S. Department of Education for the extension of RUNet 2000 construction to K-12 facilities in Newark and New Brunswick was awarded to the university in May 2000.

Computing Services played an active role in university-wide IT development activities with both internal and external organizations. Staff members:

• Assisted other units of the university with external funding opportunities for information technology projects related to research and/or instruction.
• Teamed with other university offices to monitor and assess IT-related legislation.
• Worked to match university technology resources and faculty outreach efforts with K-12 needs and interests.
• Advanced the activities of the university-wide High-Speed Network Applications Committee.
• Participated in and helped to expand the university's relationships and joint activities with government organizations and industry partners.

II. Major Highlights and Accomplishments

A. University Directorates

1. Administrative Computing Services

FY 2000 Goals

Publicly Visible Goals

Build a web registration system that complements touch-tone registration and permits students to add/drop courses in real-time via the Internet.

Build a virtual "student data mall" on the web encapsulating all the types of information and services students need, in a single, easily navigable web site. Examples include on-line registration, schedule of classes, transcript requests, statements of accounts, address update, financial aid documents and grades; all in a single integrated site.

Re-engineer Whitepages on-line directory services and develop a process for managing Rutgers constituents and their various relationships to the University. The People Database is the underpinning structure for this project. The initial Release will integrate students, faculty, and staff into a new People database. It will also completely replace the current on-line directory and allow students to selectively suppress their own data on-line.

Deploy class rosters to faculty via the web. The web site that builds class rosters is complete. The remaining piece is to build in a security and distribution method to limit access to rosters on a need to know basis.

Complete the mandated changes in the Financial Aid Management system associated with the federal financial aid reauthorization that occurs every five years.

ARTSYS, phase 1 (course articulation) will be completed in fall 1999. ARTSYS, phase 2 (e-transcript) will be implemented in spring 2000.

Provide the necessary system modifications to support pay-for performance including an on-line web processing and interface with legacy payroll system.

Complete Y2k conversions, testing and infrastructure upgrades. Prepare action plan for contingency and "fallout" problems.

Provide support for Winter Term in the Student system. Initiate a formal planning process, work plan and cost assessment for the implementation.

If funding is forthcoming, initiate phase 1 of the GPED to provide a data repository of graduate program information with on-line web access.

Internal Infrastructure Goals

Develop an architectural road map for administrative systems addressing technology, data, process, applications and transitional issues.

IBM has enhanced the functionality of its mainframe operating system in v2.8 considerably. This upgrade will also keep ACS in line with current support levels, which is critical to the reliability of these systems to the University. Work is projected to begin on this upgrade in April 2000.

This upgrade is required to improve reliability and availability of the University's centrally supported administrative data warehouses and Web pages. It also allows us to stay current with Oracle's latest functionality and security. The upgrade is targeted for late spring 2000.

This is a potential alternative to client/server for administrative business application. This tool will permit us to leverage the knowledge base we already have in Oracle's suite of application development tools - Developer 2000 - to Internet enable existing systems such as HR Info, and to build new Internet enabled business applications.

This product offers us the ability to build Oracle based web sites more quickly and efficiently with a visual browser based tool. This tool could position ACS to offer web site hosting to departments looking to build web sites and add administrative data access to their web without having to maintain web servers and databases themselves.

Once ACS has completed Y2K testing for the Oracle Web Server applications, the new production Oracle Web Server running on Sun Solaris servers will be moved into production. This server will improve availability and reliability as we begin to add more critical University applications to this platform. The implementation of this new server is targeted for November 1999.

Upgrade subnets supporting ACS Production servers to 100Mb speed to enable our customers a greater degree of productivity and faster access. Target first half of FY 99/00.

Complete outstanding audit recommendations.

Continue the process of reducing centralized data entry through the implementation of electronic feeds and re-engineering on-line applications.

Organizational Goals

Implement a process for formal professional development planning for the ACS staff in concert with business needs.

Develop a process for surveying customer satisfaction.

Create a formal program or project management function that will facilitate overall project management. Implement structured methods and procedures for project management, release planning, business partnerships with clients and system development. This is a new role, which in part will be based on the availability of funding.

FY 2000 Accomplishments

Publicly Visible Goals

Student Web Registration

Goal: Build a web registration system that complements touch-tone registration and permits students to add/drop courses in real-time via the Internet.

Status: Web-based student self-service registration was implemented university wide for fall 2000 demand registration after a successful pilot for the Newark campus spring 2000 add/drop period. This application was meant to complement existing touchtone registration. Existing mainframe registration programs were leveraged through the use of mainframe web server technology. This implementation provides an alternative means for student registration, one that is more efficient and flexible than online touch-tone registration. Students are now able to add/drop multiple courses at once, link to the online schedule of classes during registration decisions and to receive real-time status on course/section availability via this link. This real time course availability status was made possible via a related project - implementation of BMC's ChangeDataMove product which allows for real time downloads of incremental Information Management System (IMS) transactions, and the formatting and loading of these transactions to Oracle. At its highest peak use, web registration was accessed over 128,000 times during April 2000.

Student Data Mall

Goal: Build a virtual "student data mall" on the web encapsulating all the types of information and services students need, in a single, easily navigable web site. Examples include on-line registration, schedule of classes, transcript requests, statements of accounts, address update, financial aid documents and grades; all in a single integrated site.

Status: No significant progress has been made on this initiative. Java in Administrative systems Special Interest Group (ja-sig) is jointly developing a university portal framework in java. Progress on this project will be closely watched as the University of British Columbia goes live with the portal in September for 30,000 students.

Rutgers Online Directory/People Database

Goal: Re-engineer Whitepages on-line directory services and develop a process for managing Rutgers constituents and their various relationships to the University.

Status: The Rutgers Online Directory and People Database was implemented in August to provide web-enabled information display and maintenance functionality for students, faculty and staff. The People Database provides an integrated Oracle repository of all Rutgers constituents including students, faculty, staff and guests. The new online directory replaces the white-pages directory. In addition to the look-up features provided by the directory, other features include "privilege view" for account management and security administration, personal information disclosure management for students, and guest processing for departments. The student disclosure management function, required as a result of a student senate resolution, provides the student with the ability to control disclosure of their personal information. This disclosure management functionality supports the Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and empowers the student to selectively choose personal information for disclosure or non-disclosure. The Privilege View was developed to support the network services management function, which allows OIT/NBCS to assist in problems related to student account creation. A key feature of the People database architecture is the Rutgers Community Participant Identifier (RCP-ID) which was established to provide a unique identifier for all students, faculty and staff. The People database online directory is accessed on average 120,000 times per month.

Class Rosters

Goal: Deploy class rosters to faculty via the web.

Status: Online Web based class rosters were implemented in January as a pilot for faculty in Newark and the New Brunswick Math department. Approximately 500 users were involved in the pilot. Functionality includes roster development and administration for security, distribution and reporting. The application allows hierarchical management and administration from University Registrar through Deans, Department Heads and faculty. University wide roll-out is scheduled for fall 2000.

Financial Aid Reauthorization

Goal: Complete the mandated changes in the Financial Aid Management system associated with the federal financial aid reauthorization that occurs every five years.

Status: Enhancements to the Financial Aid Management suite of systems were implemented for compliance with ongoing federal regulations. Significant enhancements have been made to Direct Loan, the Recipient Financial Management System (RFMS) and the Outside Application Resource (OAR) Cycle to include, among other things, a secondary confirmation process. Additional enhancements were made to PARS in order to package new merit scholarship awards.

ARTSYS (Transfer course articulation system)

Goal: ARTSYS Phase One (course articulation) will be completed in fall 1999. ARTSYS Phase Two (e-transcript) will be implemented in spring 2000.

Status: ARTSYS Phase One (web based community college transfer course articulation) was officially rolled out in April to New Jersey Community Colleges and their students over the World Wide Web. ARTSYS provides students with a user-friendly tool to aid them in precisely planning their Community College course curriculum for easy transfer to Rutgers. The goal is to enable students to seamlessly transfer the maximum amount of course work toward a Rutgers degree program. The establishment of these course equivalencies also enabled Rutgers Colleges to standardize course articulation results with each Community College. Prior to ARTSYS Phase One, Community College students often planned their courses with incomplete or inaccurate information. This often resulted in students taking Community College classes whose credit would not transfer to Rutgers. From the Rutgers perspective, colleges no longer need to assess the transferability of every individual student transcripts since the process has been fully automated.

This initiative involved installation, testing and tuning of the ARTSYS software, custom software development, coordination of the creation and processing of course files from all nineteen New Jersey community colleges, and course equivalency files from 60 Rutgers academic departments. The overall effort called for the evaluation of more than 15,000 community college courses, the establishment of over 150,000 course equivalencies and the establishment of approximately 400 recommended transfer programs. Appropriate links have been put in place to allow prospective students to access ARTSYS via the web.

Pay-For-Performance (P4P)

Goal: Provide the necessary system modifications to support pay-for performance including an on-line web processing and interface with legacy payroll system.

Status: The P4P application was developed and successfully deployed during April/May 2000 to more than sixty end-user desktops in Human Resources and the various departments. The application was successfully used to administer the Pay for Performance process for both current and previous fiscal years. The application provided role-based security that was administered by Human Resources (HR) and AS Data Base Administrators (DBAs). Functionality was driven by a rules-based algorithm that validated minimum and maximum dollars allowed, based on HR rules for increments and bonuses. Functionality included a refresh capability for employee status change. Reports included eligibility listings, awards made and dollars spent among other reports. This new process supports both central University HR efforts in managing and rolling out P4P and departments in administering and distributing performance dollars. This implementation eliminated the inefficient manual processes and massive amount of data entry performed in previous years.

Year 2000 (Y2K) Compliance

Goal: Complete Y2K conversions, testing and infrastructure upgrades. Prepare action plan for contingency and "fallout" problems.

Status: All administrative applications were successfully converted for Y2K compliance. This initiative involved detailed analysis, system enhancements to batch and online processes across multiple processing platforms and databases and exhaustive testing. Regarding the latter, in addition to traditional testing, forward-date testing in which 21st century date simulation was executed. This test was designed with a rolling system date in order to simulate key university business cycles in the 21st century and to simulate university business events in proper sequence of operation.

The Y2K initiative called for extensive infrastructure support. Changes and testing for the Y2K infrastructure for our Unix/Oracle, NT, and Novell Netware Servers along with all ACS desktops were completed in December 1999. Forty-two commercial software applications were changed or replaced and tested during the fall 1999 time frame. Additionally, twelve servers (Unix and NT) were changed or replaced and then tested during this time frame. The production Novell Server infrastructure was completely replaced and moved over to the production NT infrastructure. Staff worked through the holiday week break to prepare the systems for shutdown and then to bring them back up and test them out on January 1st.

In order to manage the risk associated with the Y2K initiative, contingency planning was undertaken both within ACS and with our clients. As the New Year approached users expressed concerns and made requests for special runs during the holiday break. Additional staff employees were scheduled to work over the holidays in order to handle the workload. The Application Development and ACTS groups collaborated in the development and management of an integrated project plan. Additionally, weekly meetings were held prior to and after the new millennium in order to ensure total success.

Winter Term

Goal: Provide support for Winter Term in the student system. Initiate a formal planning process, work plan and cost assessment for the implementation.

Status: Enhancements to the Student Information Management Systems (SIMS) were completed to accurately incorporate Winter Session as a separate term on student transcripts and to integrate these courses into the GPA calculation that is displayed on each transcript. This request has been outstanding for the last five years and the increasing enrollment in Winter Session programs, across campuses, has required the need to address this area this year. In May 2000 approximately 175,000 grades were processed and approximately 46,000 transcripts were generated. In order to clean-up the database, the students enrolled in the Winter Sessions for 1999 and 2000 had their courses moved to an appropriate area on the database, entered on their transcripts and their GPA recalculated to include these courses. The online transcripts & grades web application is also being enhanced to support this new feature. Additional enhancements to other batch and online SIMS processes are planned which will allow access to and maintenance of winter term information.

Graduate & Professional Education (GPED) Reporting

Goal: If funding is forthcoming, initiate Phase One of the GPED to provide a data repository of graduate program information with on-line web access.

Status: With no funding approved for development of a Graduate/Professional Data Warehouse, a short term less costly project was undertaken for development of a reporting system for graduate and professional school reporting. A pilot project for the Graduate School - NB is currently in the user acceptance phase. Graduate experience profiles across multiple years includes: student enrollments, degrees awarded, Graduate Regency Exams (GRE) scores, TA/GA participation, course enrollments and attrition. The prototype reports will be presented to Standards and Priorities for Academic Development (CSPAD) in the near future. Discussions are underway with the Office of Institutional Research to address a broader roll-out of this reporting to additional schools and the implementation of a web interface to allow integration of centralized data and "local" department/school data. These schools previously did not have access to centralized data and were unable to respond to internal and external surveys and statistical queries in a timely fashion with accurate data.

Other Publicly Visible Accomplishments and
Value Added Activities

ACS has implemented a new First Year Sectioning system (formerly known as Freshman Sectioning). This effort entailed researching and evaluating vendor product offerings, installation, testing and tuning of the vendor product, and custom software development. By combining the Time Program Horaire (scheduling) (TPH) Sectioning product with the front end web process ACS developed, we now provide a state of the art solution for the First Year Sectioning process. This new application will lead to greater efficiencies and will save the Dean's offices hundreds of hours of manual reviews and modifications. In the past, the deans had to manually review 40-50% of the first year students programs. With the new system the rework of student programs has been reduced to less than 5%. The system allows the Scheduling office to maintain course offerings and the Dean's offices to input student course requests. The overall benefit to the university is a significantly more efficient and accurate First Year Sectioning process and movement towards state of the art technology and away from an antiquated (28 years old) system.

The new web-based Course Analysis System (CAS) has been rolled out to academic departments, the Office of Institutional Research and other University administrative offices. The enhanced system provides state of the art technology and enhanced data collection and data validation. Processes were put in place to verify collected data against official University HR data which has significantly decreased the need for error correction and data entry (ACS data entry staff now use MS Internet Explorer to input the documents). Additionally, the system will allow more timely data collection and for sole sourcing of faculty workload data for all courses. Prior to this implementation, it was necessary to perform extensive data entry at the department level and centralized data entry department level of all course and faculty information, which frequently led to inaccuracies and wasted effort.

Web Access to student financial information was implemented in fall 1999, thus empowering students to more readily manage their financial accounts. This new service satisfies an outstanding request made by students at various focus groups. Students have the ability to view a current snapshot of their financial statement of account including tuition, fees, payments, financial aid awards, refunds and remission information through a secure web process. Before this implementation, students could only get this information by standing on line at a cashier's office or waiting for a periodic mailing. Since implementation (November 1999), the Web Statement of Accounts has been accessed about 27,000 times (appx. 4,000 month).

To facilitate commencement and degree processing, enhancements to the registration systems were implemented that automate the populating of degree information in the Student Records Database. This has eliminated the need for manual posting of degree information thus saving hundreds of hours of clerical time in the Registrar's office as well as improving the accuracy of the data.

At the request of the SIFT Committee, Students who are currently de-registered for non-payment can now pay their bills at the cashiers office and have their courses reinstated at the same time. In the past, students would have to go to the cashiers' office to make their payments and then go to the Registrars office to have their courses re-registered. This is one example of the many ways ACS is working together with the functional areas to improve processes that have a direct impact on the quality of services provided to students.

To avoid a potential legal action, student systems (i.e. admissions, financial aid, registration, student data warehouse, people database) which rely on the social security number as the student id; were modified to allow a social security number to be carried in a separate field. Business logic in these systems was updated accordingly to read this new filed rather than the student ID. Of particular complexity was the financial aid system that requires a social security number for processing aid. These changes will be leveraged with students since the using of social security number as an identifier is no longer a requirement and this has been a growing concern with the student body.

Student Financial Hold processing was implemented in fall 1999. This new application allows the Student Financial Services Office and other student system offices to update (place and remove) financial holds online. The main benefit to this application, other than the ease of updating these holds, is to get the holds updated in a more timely manner (nightly) as compared the 3 to 5 days in the old application. This has improved student service and reduced the possibility of a student being de-registered for financial holds. Another benefit to this application is the elimination of centralized data entry for the clearing of financial holds.

Several initiatives were undertaken to improve financial aid processing and eliminate duplicate data entry. The IRS and tracking online screens were enhanced to allow data to be entered one time and automatically copied to multiple school records. Previously, the data had to be manually entered 3 to 4 times to update each school record. Bar codes were added to the award letters to allow scanning and eliminate the need to enter the social security number into the system, thus providing significant streamlining of the Imaging process. A new verification process was implemented that reduced the number of students selected for verification and simplified the process. The resource audit report was changed to a cumulative report rather than separate weekly reports that were difficult to manage. These initiatives have saved the financial aid staff many hours of data entry and streamlined several processes.

In addition to project based activities such as those mentioned, ACS has also delivered on many task requests including but not limited to report enhancements, process enhancements, and requests for information such as data queries and data file generation. ACS has also provided maintenance and enhancements to the "cyclical" application processes that support the ongoing day-to-day business of the University. Some of the cyclical activities supported by enhancements and/or maintenance in the past year include:

NJAS Annual Cycle Startup and Enhancements

Graduate Admissions cycle start-up

Student Registration & Grade Processing (i.e. 194,600 grades were process during the Fall Semester)

Course and Room Scheduling

First Year Sectioning

Financial Aid award packaging

Student Term Bill Processing

1098 Processing (Hope Tax and Life Time Learning Credit) (i.e. 69,000 1098 forms were generated sent to students and the IRS)

Accounting Processing (GL, Budget, AP)

Payroll Processing (paychecks, 1099s, 1042s, benefit statements)

W2 Processing (i.e. 28,764 W2's were produced in January)

University Services (SHOTS, CARS, CAS, SURE, Faculty Survey, Faculty Staff Directory, LDB, OIR reports)

On average ACS schedules over 400 mainframe batch jobs daily or roughly 20,400 jobs annually

1,800 requests for program documentation changes

1,560 revised programming jobs

74 new programming job requests

166 deleted jobs

Internal Infrastructure Goals Fiscal Year 99/00, Status Update

Upgrade Mainframe Operating System to OS/390 v2.8

Goal: Upgrade the IBM mainframe operating system to OS/390 v2.8.

Status: IBM has enhanced the functionality of its mainframe operating system in v2.8 considerably. This upgrade will enhance the capability of Web Server implementation on Rutadmin and open up data currently stored on Rutadmin. Additionally, this upgrade will also keep ACS in line with current support levels, which is critical to the reliability of these systems to the University. Planning for the upgrade is in process and the implementation target date has been moved out to November 2000 to provide the ACS staff appropriate time to upgrade the entire Oracle/Unix infrastructure currently in place.

Upgrade Oracle to version 8 I

Goal: This upgrade is required to improve reliability and availability of the University's centrally supported administrative data warehouses and Web pages. It also allows us to stay current with Oracle's latest functionality and security.

Status: Upgrading Oracle to version 8I has been incorporated into the project plan for the Unix Server Upgrade that will be occurring in August.

New Production Oracle Web Server

Goal: Once ACS has completed Y2K testing for the Oracle Web Server applications, the new production Oracle Web Server running on Sun Solaris servers will be moved into production. This server will improve availability and reliability as we begin to add more critical University applications to this platform.

Status: Phased upgrade plans were prepared during the spring for the entire Unix Server architecture not just the web server. This is due to the overwhelming increase in demand and usage of the web based application and Oracle databases. The new servers have just arrived and implementation plans have been prepared to complete the upgrade in August.

ACS Network Enhancements

Goal: Upgrade subnets supporting ACS Production servers to 100Mb speed to enable our customers a greater degree of productivity and faster access. Target first half of FY 99/00.

Status: This project was scaled back due to a lack of resource. However, while the project did not progress as expected, we have successfully moved the mainframe, the production Oracle Unix database server and the production Oracle/Unix Web server from 10Mb to 100Mb. This will improve network speed to critical administrative production systems to enhance the service provided to ACS customers.

Internal Audit Recommendations

Goal: Complete outstanding audit recommendations.

Status: Over the past year ACS has worked closely with the Internal Audit Department to resolve 83 outstanding audit recommendations dating back to 1990. Although there were many audit recommendations resolved since 1990, because of organizational changes, staffing issues, and other priorities; little attention had been given to addressing these recommendations until this year. Over the past year policies and procedures were updated, written, and implemented to enable ACS to close 76 of the outstanding recommendations with the remaining issues currently being addressed and under negotiation.

Data Entry

Goal: Continue the process of reducing centralized data entry through the implementation of electronic feeds and re-engineering on-line applications.

Status: Strides continue to be made to reduce the amount of data entry occurring over the year. This year a significant reduction was seen in Address Director Record (ADR) processing. Since these forms are now available via the web for direct entry by staff, the data entry department experienced a 28% reduction in forms needing central keying.

Similar strides are being made in the CAS area where new web applications have been developed to eliminate unnecessary keying of data.

Progress continues to be made in the automating of Time Reporting Forms and their biweekly submission to Payroll. The Payroll department has agreed to pilot the program and strategy and together we are working with Ann Martin in New Brunswick as the test case. The TRF automatic feeds brings us another step closer to reducing user department dependencies on data entry.

Additional Internal Infrastructure Accomplishments

Over the past year ACS contracted to have an external intrusion detection analysis performed. After completion of the study, 2 Sun development servers were found to be vulnerable were rebuilt. Technical support staff also brought all operating systems up to the latest patch levels to improve reliability. Additionally, ACS technical support staff replaced the original version of Oracle's Web Server, which was no longer supported. The backup and restore capability for our Oracle/Unix infrastructure was also improved. To improve monitoring capabilities of the Oracle/Unix production Web applications, a process was developed for the operations staff to use for test each of the applications periodically during each shift. This has allowed us to proactively address problems before they are reported by our clients.

This project will enable University wide imaging services. Initial departments using or requesting use of this service are Undergraduate Admissions, Financial Aid, Student Financial Services, Graduate Admissions, Registration, Purchasing and Human Resources. A full analysis was performed and a report including recommendations prepared which will be reviewed and discussed with the Users. The current architecture is serviceable for department needs but does not appear scale to a University-wide shared repository of images and is instead is resulting in stovepipes of images for each department. To date this has not been seen as a problem but may be problematic in the future.

The continued demand on disk storage has forced a number of disk upgrades as more and more materials are imaged especially in Undergraduate Admissions. Future disk demands will have to be addressed by utilizing Magnetic Optical Disk. A magnetic optical disk jukebox would save additional expansion cost and provided archival of data. Projected costs are being reviewed and funding will be discussed with the primary clients.

In October 1999, the Oracle/Unix production database server and the production NT Web Server were successfully restored at the Sungard Disaster Recovery facilities in Philadelphia. Due to backup tape problems we were unable to restore the ACS Oracle/Unix production Web Server. Changes have been made to prevent this problem from occurring in the future.

The Shadow Web Server was fully implemented on the ACS mainframe computer (Rutadmin) in January 2000. This enabled the successful implementation of the new Web Registration system in January 2000. Students are now able to perform Add/Drop via the Web in addition to using Touch-Tone Telephone Registration.

After further analysis it was determined that the cost and support issue to roll out a University wide backup offering from ACS was cost prohibitive. A site visit took place at Princeton University to review their University wide backup service based on the same software. For a much smaller student, faculty and staff base than Rutgers University they required upward of 6 Tape Silos from Storage Technology. Additionally, significant mainframe upgrade and disk upgrades would be required. As a result ACS is currently testing an alternative backup and restore strategy to replace the current back-up system and provide this service for the current pilot departments in the Administrative Services Building along with ACS.

Ben email program on the administrative mainframe was at least 10 years old and was not Y2K compliant. Rather than replacing Ben with another email product, administrative mainframe email users were successfully transitioned to Research Computing Initiative (RCI) email accounts.

A temporary Oracle/Unix server was successfully installed and configured to support the initial project team training for Oracle Financials, HR, Budgeting, Purchasing, etc. Analysis and planning also took place to determine an appropriate server to support the RIAS project for the first eighteen months. A Sun E6500 Server with appropriate resource was ordered in May 2000 and is targeted for installation in July 2000.

A OIT cross-divisional team comprised of staff members of ACS, the Telecommunications Division and New Brunswick Computing Services worked together to insure the network (voice and data) and desktop infrastructure was setup in a very aggressive time frame in May 2000 for the IAS project team. These staff members were able to complete this work within the required time frame to enable the project team to move into their temporary location.

The administrative mainframe computer was upgraded in March from an IBM 9672-R41 to an IBM Multiprise 3000 Model H50 mainframe. This has provided sufficient capacity for handling peak on-line and peak production batch periods as well as the Web Registration peak in April 2000 and the anticipated peak in September 2000. The new mainframe arrived in early March and was tested and then moved into production as planned on Sunday, March 19, 2000. Since the install we have experienced noticeable improvements in response time and batch job turn around.

Our current UPS system is running at a 33% percent capacity with a life cycle of 1- hours. However, this was not the case earlier in the year. The life cycles of the batteries on the UPS system were expiring and system reliability was compromised because of it. In addition, the ASB building suffers from a history of power hits during inclement weather. To alleviate the exposure, new batteries were installed with a five-year warranty and scheduled preventive maintenance is now routinely performed twice a year on the Liebert UPS and Power Distribution Units.

Tape media has been drastically reduced to the point that one of the 3420 tape units will be taken off maintenance from IBM. This is an annual cost savings of about $3,000.00 dollars. Production Control has informed our users that support for the 3420 tape media will be discontinued and only 3490E tapes or transmissions through electronic submission will be supported. Users were very receptive and willing to comply with this change.

A new unit was purchased from Xerox last summer and was installed just in time for the July Year-End closing. The old Xerox 4135-tape unit had reached its life cycle and was no longer supported by Xerox, moreover it was creating considerable problems, requiring reprints of reports due to tape errors and failures. The new unit has improved reliability and eliminated previous operational problems.

The back entrance to the data center is the area where all the print forms are received by our staff. The previous wooden ramp had suffered wear and tear and was becoming more hazardous for employees and delivery staff. The ramp was completely dismantled by the Facilities department and a new cement ramp was constructed.

Organizational Goals

Professional Development

Goal: Implement a process for formal professional development planning for the ACS staff in concert with business needs.

Status: A core strategic goal for 199/2000 was to implement a more formal professional development program that blends the business needs of the division. ACS has made strong inroads in achieving this goal as formal development plans were developed by each area in ACS. These provided a roadmap that was used in concert with business planning throughout the year. In 1999/2000 ACS committed increased funding to support professional development and new opportunities for growth and learning were continually sought, encouraged, and created. Staff has participated in self-study initiatives, formal training, presentations, conferences and seminars. Brown bag lunch events and Friday breakfast meetings that highlight a particular application or technology are just a few of the ways development and cross learning is encouraged. Listed below are a sampling of the conferences, technical education and general professional development activities ACS staff attended during the year.

Conferences/Shows/Exposes

IMS Technical Conference

SHARE Conference

Data Warehouse World

Oracle Applications User Group

Business Rule Symposium

North Atlantic Higher Ed Oracle Users Group

Educause '99

College and University Machine Records Conference (CUMREC) (also known as the College and University Computing Conference)

Electronic Access Conference

Oracle Developer Seminar

Oracle Open World

Docutext Workshop

Print On Demand Expo

SAS User Group Meeting

Education, Technical

Data Modeling and Erwin Training

Oracle 7 Introduction

Oracle, Developing Web Based Application with PL-SQL

Oracle, Application Server Administration

Oracle, Introduction to Oracle for Experienced SQL Users

Oracle, Introduction to PL-SQL

Oracle, Developer 2000

Oracle, Deploying Web Based Applications

Oracle, Applications Server

Fundamentals of Solaris

IMS Installation & Maintenance

Ins & Outs of IMS Security

Visual Basic Fundamentals

Seagate Crystal Reports 7

Auditing Oracle Financials

Introduction to Computers

Computers Made Easy

Windows 95 Class

Windows NT

Excel 97

Outlook 97

Word 2000

A+ Microcomputer Certification

Education, General

Managing multiple Projects, Objectives, and Deadlines

Service Excellence Leadership

QCI Leadership Program

Management Skills

Team Building Workshop, QCI

Process Improvement Workshop, QCI

High Impact Communication Skills for Women

Challenge of Leadership Seminar

Conflict Management Seminar

Establishing Performance Priorities Seminar

Problem Solving & Decision Making Seminar

Motivation Leadership Seminar

Emphasis on development, education, and training will continue to be a core strategic goal for ACS. In the coming year, emphasis will also be placed on staff rotation and cross training thus building stronger competencies and flexibility in the organization which will allow ACS to more efficiently and effectively meet the evolving needs of the University.

Customer Satisfaction

Goal: Develop a process for surveying customer satisfaction.

Status: ACS managers and staff are increasingly reaching out to our customers and clients to provide feedback and assistance in advising on priorities as well as operational issues. In an effort to expand our customer outreach, presentations have been provided in Newark, Camden, and New Brunswick highlighting new web applications and soliciting feedback on enhancements and new functionality. ACS staff has also attended various committee meetings on the different campuses to both provide information and gather feedback. When rolling out new applications it has become standard operating practice to gather customer input. In a recent example, the pilot group of users testing the Class Roster application were electronically surveyed to gather their recommendations and general satisfaction using the new application. ACS will continue to look for opportunities to survey client satisfaction and gather feedback both from our traditional functional users and the public at large.

Project Management Function

Goal: Create a formal program or project management function that will facilitate overall project management. Implement structured methods and procedures for project management, release planning, business partnerships with clients and system development. This is a new role, which in part will be based on the availability of funding.

Status: As an initial step in moving toward a formal project management function, a Systems Development Process (SDP) was developed in March for the applications area. SDP provides a structured yet flexible methodology for preparing the major deliverables on a system development project. Staff has been trained in the methodology and are gradually using the SDP for all development initiatives.

Additional Organizational Accomplishments and Activities

As the organization evolved over the year, it became apparent that there some restructuring was necessary. Ed Cardona and Joe Percoco were promoted to director level positions recognizing their increased role in the Division. In this new capacity Ed Cardona assumed the role of Director of Production Services and Technical Support and Joe Percoco the Director or Application Development and Data Management.

ACS sponsored two facilitators Ed Cardona and Don Gordon to attend the University Human Resources (UHR) Pay for Performance (P4P) training seminars. Workshops were then conducted for all ACS managers, thus ensuring consistency and quality of the P4P program implementation in the division.

The Production Control area was completely renovated. The area received a well deserved face lift with new rugs; new room color, chairs, blinds, cabling, and furniture. In addition, new computers replaced older PC's, and voice mail was installed on all the telephones. Revamping the production control area, and improving the working conditions has improved morale and enhance service. Users can call and speak directly to their responsible parties or leave voice mails, as oppose to everyone sharing one telephone extension. Employees are happy in their new environment and feel appreciated.

Performance indicators were developed for the Production Services and Operations area. The indicators are monthly gauges for review by the managers and help demonstrate overall performance and pinpoint areas of improvement. Some of the indicators demonstrate mainframe system performance, scheduled and unscheduled downtime, web monitoring, production batch cycle problems, volume printing, maintenance, overtime, expenditures, employee performance, etc. The performance indicators are providing an instrumental source of information when reviewing overtime schedules, expenses, as well as other operational areas of improvement.

A concerted effort has gone into promoting the new services and web applications the division has developed. In addition to presents and web announcements, a number of articles have featured and or referenced some of the new ACS applications. Listed below is a summary of those that have occurred over the past year.

Date of Article	Media Source	Title of Article
24-Sep-99	The Daily Targum	New Web site allows information changes
21-Oct-99	The Daily Targum	On Line registration system contemplated
17-Nov-99	Rutgers Focus	New Web service enables Rutgers students to review accounts
3-Jan-00	The Daily Targum	Overload denies access to transcripts
21-Jan-00	Rutgers Focus	Foiling the virus
28-Jan-00	Rutgers Focus	Serving Students at www.rutgers.edu
28-Jan-00	Rutgers Focus	Smooth transition to the Year 2000
28-Jan-00	Rutgers Focus	Newark students try registering online
9-Feb-00	The Daily Targum	Computing services receives award for Y2K plans
18-Feb-00	Rutgers Focus	Excellent performance honored
19-Mar-00	Newark Star Ledger	Rutgers Database aimed at easing transfer angst
21-Mar-00	Rutgers Focus	Section assignments, a matter of course
21-Mar-00	Rutgers Focus	Rutgers Online Web services are making student life lots easier
21-Mar-00	The Daily Targum	Section assignments, a matter of course
4-Apr-00	The Daily Targum	U. introduces online registration
14-Apr-00	Rutgers Focus	Web publishing made easy
5-May-00	Rutgers Focus	Integrated Administrative System to be Introduced

2. University Computing Services

A major reorganization took place within Computing Services this year. New Brunswick Computing Services was divided into two directorships under the leadership of Dr. Charles Hedrick. Dr. Hedrick assumed the role of University Director of Campus Computing Services and Chief Technical Officer. In this capacity he will coordinate regional computing services support and provide vision and focus for the development of the future computing environment of the University.

Instructional Computing Initiative (ICI - Student Fee)

Computing Services received 25% of the fall and spring term student computing fee funds. These funds were used to advance RUNet 2000 and provide student services and support.

Student services provided by the Student Computing Fee

• Obtaining an account
• Connection to the network
• Email, web and directory services, and direct authentication support
• Academic instructional computing support
• Computing site licenses
• One year account extension to alumni
• Improved web based services

Projects funded by the Student Computing Fee

Approximately half of the student fee income provided to OIT supports RUnet 2000. Of the remaining funds, the majority provides continuing support such as hardware maintenance, phone lines for modems, and staff. The projects shown here represent a sample of those projects funded by ICI.

Disk Space: Disk space allocations have been increased to 60 megabytes (MB) for fall, 2000. Major expenditures have been made for disks, file servers, and backup technology. Until recently, students have had an allocation of 5 MB of disk space. This is no longer sufficient. Over the last few years, there has been increased use of attachments in email and web areas with graphics and more complex applications.

New Central Services: The ability for students to mount their home directories on Pegasus, and clam is available from the Windows systems in Newark and Camden.

Support for central Netscape profiles: This allows students to store information such as preferences and bookmarks in a location that can be accessed from any of our labs and also from home.

Web Programming: Eden in New Brunswick and Pegasus in Newark now support web programs written using the PHP language. This is a widely used language specifically tailored for web applications. Camden initiated a centralized web/video service based on Unix.

System Management: This year we improved system management in a number of ways. The most visible is better statistics. Major usage data is now available via the web for New Brunswick and Camden.

Upgrading hardware and software , in accordance with our 5-year upgrade cycle. Highlights include:

operating system upgrades

new versions of applications software such as SAS and SPSS

new servers at all lab locations in New Brunswick

upgrades of central servers in all three campuses

Networking Infrastructure Central facilities have been upgraded on all three campuses to RUnet 2000 standards, i.e. 100 Mbps Ethernet requiring new network hardware, and moving services from Appletalk to TCP/IP. The number of dialups has been increased, and new authentication technology was implemented in Newark. Projects were recently completed which were started in previous years to upgrade modem service in Newark.

3. University Telecommunications

FY 2000 Goals

a. Plan and Implement RUNet 2000

• Develop and publishing technical networking standards to facilitate a smooth migration from the legacy network to the RUNet 2000 network
• Complete outside plant construction on Busch and Livingston campuses
• Provide connections to I2 recipients as chosen by the Research Advisory Board
  Develop budget/work progress report structure to keep administration informed with formal monthly reports
• Establish a communications plan which ties directly to the project schedule and is easily understood by all members of the university community

b. Non-RUNet 2000 Related Goals

• Develop a TDSC which improves TD responsiveness to university requests
• Ensure no Y2K network problems
• Develop a disciplined project management approach to all processes in TD
• Leverage RU's size in obtaining economies of scale in all telecommunications areas (data equipment, voice equipment, computers)
• Continue to support non-RUNet 2000 wiring projects. Some current projects being worked on for 1999/2000 include:

  41 Gordon Road

  Alcohol Studies

  Army ROTC

  Blumenthal, 3rd Floor

  CABM

  Camden Outreach - LEAP Academy

  Cancer Research

  Center for Law and Justice, Newark

  Clothier Hall

  Foran Hall

  ISP - Chemistry Annex Modular

  Louis Brown Athletic Center (RAC)

  Marine Science, Busch (Green Bldg.)

  Neuroscience - Nelson Hall

  Newark, K-12 Outreach

  Psychology, Tillett, Livingston

  Tuckerton Dorm 2

  UMDNJ - New Brunswick

  Waksman, Werner Braun

  Writing Lab - Cook/Douglass

  Zimmerli Museum

FY 2000 Accomplishments

The Telecommunications Division (TD) was reorganized with an emphasis on functional responsibility. This restructuring resulted in the establishment of a Customer Service Center (CSC) with an appropriate external focus as well as more closely aligning plant installation with plant design. In addition, the overall structure of the Network Operations Group was modified to more closely align its perspective with the three primary campus areas, Newark, Camden, and New Brunswick. This formal organizational alignment is in advance of increased network responsibilities associated with the deployment of infrastructure as part of RUNet 2000 as well as ongoing responsibility on the legacy Rutgers Network (RUNet).

As part of university outreach to K-12, TD engineered and constructed a 100Mbit link from the Camden campus external handoff router to the LEAP Academy in Camden. This required development of external handoff infrastructure, design and deployment of dedicated fiber infrastructure, design and deployment of customer infrastructure, and custom LAN facilities. The end result is a building with full access to Rutgers, the Internet and Internet2. The bandwidth provided is Internet2 class, representing a 20-fold increase over the majority of building connections at the university.

TD intervened when a critical network congestion of a world class researcher affiliated with both the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) and environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI) experienced operational problems. To address their immediate concern, TD facilitated the successful negotiation between EOHSI and another Rutgers center whereby an existing T1 (1.5Mbit leased line) connection would be shared. This solution was deployed within several days and solved the immediate problem.

TD leveraged this collaboration to restructure connectivity between EOHSI, UMDNJ, and the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine (CABM). The primary connection between Rutgers University and UMDNJ was restructured such that it no longer traversed an overloaded, low bandwidth building Local Area Network (LAN) within CABM that contained over 240 active hosts. Instead, a high-speed connection between the two institutions was engineered separately and placed appropriately on an external handoff router. While CABM will benefit immediately by no longer sharing their LAN with inter-institutional traffic, both institutions will benefit from the twenty-fold increase in bandwidth. Further, the relocated connection actually reduces routed complexity within Rutgers, thus adding to overall network stability.

TD utilized existing fiber within the Newark backbone and between ourselves and New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) to engineer an upgraded connection. This required considerable negotiation as the two institutions had decidedly different perspectives on the appropriate manner in which higher bandwidth would be obtained. The successful completion of these negotiations resulted in the deployment of a new connection which represented a twenty-fold increase in bandwidth over the old connection. More importantly, this connection was consistent with current TD policies regarding the method and location for external connections.

TD responded to an emergent crisis at the request of Dining Services. With only two days remaining before students returned from Winter break, they were experiencing catastrophic network performance and were expecting that they would be completely unable to perform meal card changes at the beginning of the semester. Both TD and Dining Services identified the problem as existing on the Local Area Network (LAN) which was mutually conceded to be outside the responsibility of TD . However, to avoid any disruption in service to the returning student population, TD designed, contracted, and deployed a multi-building network solution to extend network services at high bandwidth between two critical locations. This required custom fiber work, identification and deployment of hardware from spare stock, rewiring of LAN infrastructure, and oversight of an external contractor. This effort was performed within the desired 48-hour window and students were able to address their meal plan concerns immediately upon returning from their break.

In addition, TD has identified that the current custom infrastructure that Dining Services had deployed was the source of many network problems that they experienced. TD took the lead in proposing solutions, which emphasized Dining Services using successful network solutions which were similar to other department or organizations at the university. Dining Services continues to adopt these solutions at a pace that is convenient to them.

A fire over winter break destroyed fiber infrastructure providing service to Career Services. Within two days, TD designed and implemented a custom wireless link to allow restoration of service without a corresponding reduction in bandwidth. This temporary link was later redesigned as a permanent installation as supply side shortages delayed replacement of the fiber plant. The wireless link provide full service to Career Services during the several month reconstruction of backbone plant at which time the building connection was moved back to fiber and the temporary wireless installation was decommissioned.

TD participated as a mock client in a Rutgers Center for Operations Research (RUTCOR) graduate course project to develop a network traffic analysis tool. The project title was "Evaluating Potential Enhancements to Rutgers' Computer Network." Fundamentally, this project consisted of the development of a methodology to perform some level of traffic analysis and scenario evaluation utilizing defined university network topology and sampled traffic patterns. While there are commercial software packages that perform some degree of network evaluation, they frequently either provide no useful information beyond topology discovery or are so invasive in terms of hardware deployment or data collection that they can not be utilized regularly. The unique approach developed consists of decomposing the university network into a directed graph where individual broadcast domains represent nodes and router interfaces represent edges. In this fashion, interface traffic, obtained directly from the routers, corresponds identically to edge flows. Also, graph analysis consistent with university routing protocols further decomposed the network into permissible data paths consistent with link capacity and mode. This data path digraph was utilized in conjunction with a doubly stochastic weighting matrix to formulate a Linear Programming (LP) problem which was solved to synthesis and thereby evaluate a variety of end-to-end scenarios from actual flow data.

TD, in conjunction with Cisco Systems, organized and presented a Tech Day event for the benefit of university Unit Computing Specialists (UCS). This all day event provided a tremendous amount of detailed technical information regarding RUNet 2000 and the legacy network. Additionally, all presentations were collected and published via the web at the RUNet 2000 internal web site, which is utilized by technical staff within the university.

TD designed and deployed a university File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server intended to serve content via the FTP protocol both within the university and to the Internet. This site, consisting of an Sun Microsystems Ultra 2 server and over 300 Gigabytes of Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disk (RAID) storage, mirrors Red Hat Linux (publicly available Unix clone) distributions as well as current releases of Netscape (WWW browser). In addition, a software repository utilizing Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) was also added. The RPM format is growing rapidly in popularity in the Internet community as it represents a stable, multi-platform method to distribute and install software. The RPM repository at ftp.rutgers.edu is primarily utilized by TD and Engineering Computing Services (ECS), but is expected to become more popular as more departments adopt RPM as a software delivery tool.

The student modems have been under considerable pressure in recent years as the number of students with computers has risen at a rate far in excess of the number of wired beds at the university. Many, if not all, of these students utilize dialup connections to attain connectivity to RUNet. The recurring charge for a single modem is approximately $22/month. This relatively small cost adds up very quickly for hundreds of modems over a twelve-month period. The $107,500 funding designated for student modems was utilized to pay for recurring costs that had not been funded when ICI elected to increase the student modem banks.

In addition, TD will be implementing universal time limits on all modems for the Fall semester as well as performing detailed analysis on the top 10% of users. While this will not obviate the need for additional modems, it will allow for better projections regarding immediate and long-term growth.

TD performed both hardware and software upgrades in advance of the clock rollover from 1999 to 2000. This resulted in decommissioning of at least one class of routers and software upgrades to approximately 50% of deployed equipment. In addition and in accordance with best industry practices, a moratorium on network changes was imposed by the end of November 1999 to ensure that no unnecessary instabilities were introduced just prior to the 1999/2000 transition. A communications plan safe against many failure modes was implemented and all appropriate staff was provided with responsibilities and procedures to implement during transition. TD completed a survey for Y2K voice compliance and met needs by installing dozens of software patches on all campuses.

There were no significant outages associated with the 1999/2000 transition and any minor disruptions were addressed quickly by responsible staff.

TD is in the process of developing detailed training to assist Unit Computing Specialists manage and utilize switching infrastructure deployed as part of the RUNet 2000 project. The Telecommunications Division has neither the staff nor resources to actively manage all LAN infrastructures within 160 academic buildings. Local staff will be required to perform much of the configuration management within the building. A blanket training account was created with Global Technologies, a Cisco designated training partner, and we are currently in the process of tailoring course content to maximize applicability within the university environment.

TD completed construction of a Network Operations Center (NOC) housed in the basement of Hill Center. This professional class facility is designed to facilitate the monitoring and management of the university network. The deployment of large-scale plasma displays will allow for roomwide display of systems information and facilitate tracking of emergent situations by multiple staff. The NOC also functions as home base to staff in the field during scheduled maintenance activities.

TD was well represented in the technical evaluation of bid responses for the New Jersey Higher Education Network (NJHEN). The successful bidder is slated to construct and manage an extensive video and data network, which will connect the higher education institutions within the state of New Jersey. In addition, after the award, TD was part of the team that developed the Master Services Agreement (MSA). This required detailed evaluation of current networking needs within the higher education community as well as direct negotiations with relevant vendors. The successful development and adoption of the MSA will allow for individual service contracts to be formed between the network vendor and respective institutions.

TD also serves on the Network Board for NJHEN. The board is composed of six members from Public Research Universities, two from State Colleges and Universities, two from Community Colleges, and three from Public Mission Independent Institutions. It will meet monthly, review and recommend a budget to the Presidents Council, oversee staff management, receive monthly reports on network operation and application services and make decisions and recommendations as appropriate, address issues as delegated by the Presidents Council, and make recommendations to the Presidents Council. The network Board members and the NJHEN Executive Director are responsible for keeping constituent service representatives informed.

New desktop hardware technology from Sun Microsystems was evaluated and ultimately purchased by the systems staff. This hardware, named the "Sun Ray 1," centralizes both the hardware and management resources normally associated with desktop Sun systems onto a central server placing only a monitor and sub $400 box and keyboard on the desktop. Though the total cost in hardware to deploy this technology is equivalent to TD's traditional methodology of deploying full Unix workstations on staff desktops, the thin client will save us considerable resources that were formerly used to manage the deployed systems. The Sun Ray thin client technology allows all administrative tasks to take place on one central system; if the thin client hardware breaks it is replaced under a service contract.

In addition to reduced administrative effort at comparable cost, this technology provides for greatly enhanced portability as sessions are maintained on the backend server and associated with a smart card. A smart card is nearly identical to a credit card, but contains an embedded chip and communications in accordance with a publicly defined Applications Programmer Interface (API). The movement of the smart card from one Sun Ray to another will result in the immediate relocation of the session. This will permit staff to move from the Network Operations Center, to the Backbone Operations, to the RUNet 2000 staging facility without disrupting any applications.

Management of desktop PC's and the staff who run them was centralized within the Network Systems group in an effort to provide a consistent level of support for all staff in TD. Through pro-active processes involving licensing, systems and software installation, printing, and network management, the desktop PC's are undergoing changes that will result in consistent and stable environment for everyone.

In coordination with TD Backbone Operations Group, TD Network Systems Group, TD Network Services Group, and the RUNet 2000 transition team, all the workgroup systems and servers used by TD were successfully migrated to RUNet 2000. This workgroup became the first regular production network on RUNet 2000. While it was not originally intended that TD would be the first RUNet 2000 connected location, the reluctance of various departments to move forward with transition efforts encouraged an early TD transition. Bandwidth to our customers was increased from fast Ethernet speeds to gigabit Ethernet.

The Network Time Protocol (NTP) allows for networked equipment to remain synchronized with respect to a time server. While this service has existed in some form at the university for some time, TD designed and implemented a three-stratum infrastructure to provide uniform NTP service to the entire university. The highest layer was constructed utilizing four clocks located on four separate campuses and four separate power grids. These clocks maintain consistency with respect to themselves and exercise a voting relationship in which a malfunctioning clock can be removed from service by unanimous decree of the others. Each campus received a dedicated server, deployed and maintained by TD, that obtains time information from one or more of the clocks. Every router obtains a time signal from its appropriate campus server. University customers can obtain a time signal from their immediate router. In this way, all equipment on all seven campuses which supports the NTP protocol can remain synchronized within milliseconds.

One of the most challenging steps in an RUnet 2000 transition is preparing all existing hosts to comply with new address and protocol policies. A first and critical step in this process is gathering a current inventory of networked devices. TD obtains a complete mapping of current L2/L3 addresses for each network from the appropriate router ARP cache and makes this data readily available via the web in either Comma Separated Variable (CSV) or ISC DHCP format. Unit Computing Specialists can use this information for both planning purposes or to significantly reduce the effort required to deploy DHCP.

OIT, with TD as lead, has invested heavily on a replacement to the way we manage Domain Naming System (DNS, facility that maps human understandable names to network understandable addresses). It was identified that, while the current system works fine for OIT, many of our customers would prefer to manage the namespace data associated with the address space allocated to them. After evaluating commercial solutions, and finding none that fit Rutgers' needs, TD Network Services solicited a set of requirements from the university community. The paradigm we have selected is that of a computing account and as such, will be governed by the RU Acceptable Use policy, the various Request for Comments (RFC's) that define DNS, and potentially an additional, more restrictive set of requirements that have been historically enforced through the university hostmaster. The new system will extend control of the data it manages to unit computing specialists, LAN managers, and system administrators via New Brunswick Computing Services RADIUS authentication system and Administrative Computing Services People Database. Pilot deployment is slated for the summer, with an anticipated production rollout to take place during the fall 2000 semester. A centralized DHCP service will also be incorporated at this time.

Systems to provide DNS, DHCP, and NTP have been designed and deployed to meet the needs of customers on both the Legacy and RUNet 2000 networks. As RUNet 2000 expands additional systems will be installed as new buildings are wired to insure all customers of the network have fast, reliable access to these services. Scheduled to become available in July, these systems will centralize the support of these three services and make them equally available to all customers at the university.

In order to better support NTP, DNS, and DHCP in a central fashion, TD is currently deploying servers on each of the campuses. This equipment consists of identical Sun Microsystems Netra T1's running off cloned disks and will be deployed with an Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) and a Cisco Systems 2511 Terminal Server to provide console access across the network. It is believed that we will be able to effectively manage this equipment with very little on-site contact. This model will be scaled up as RUNet 2000 deploys such that all 15 RUNet 2000 "A" designated buildings located on the seven campuses will contain dedicated servers. These systems will ensure uniform delivery of services to all locations within both RUNet 2000 and the legacy network.

A database system was developed to aid in the processes used to manage TD's inventory of router, switch, and systems hardware. The system utilizes bar codes to label and track assets and understands parent-child relationships between them. This system proved immediately useful in verifying systems covered for the renewal of the Sun Microsystems maintenance service contract.

TD's problem tracking system was re-deployed utilizing Remedy's Help Desk product. This new application replaced a four-year-old in-house application that our needs had outgrown. Along with this re-deployment the configuration of the system has been generalized to facilitate the remaining groups in TD who have no tracking system to use this application for their needs. Following TD's lead, the Rutgers Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT) has also recently begun to develop a security incident tracking application using this service.

Systems staff designed and developed a solution to provide access to serial consoles of equipment deployed in locations throughout the university. This solution leverages technologies used in an existing console management solution to provide remote access to consoles anywhere on the network in a highly secure manner. As RUNet 2000 hardware is deployed this solution will be expanded to facilitate high availability access to critical equipment.

TD has embraced VLANs as a formal design element in RUNet 2000 access networks. This will allow for much closer coupling between the building access network and the distribution router on which it is rooted. The use of this technology results in virtual router ports, which will permit the addition of new networks without hardware changes. Thus, RUNet 2000 class building access networks can be restructured from one to many broadcast domains without any additional costs (assuming only logical or software changes need to be made). This degree of flexibility should prove extremely useful to departmental computing liaisons.

To provide for full capability during the deployment phase of RUNet 2000 which is scheduled to last for three more years, TD rebuilt the legacy data network core in addition to all seven campus backbones The legacy data network infrastructure now consists of an OC3/OC12 (155Mbit/622Mbit) Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) core which has been extended to all seven campuses. This core is surrounded by OC3 connected Area Border Routers (ABRs). The campus side of the ABR was upgraded on each campus and consists entirely of 100Mbit Ethernet. We have added greater redundancy while simultaneously flattening the topology such that every building distribution router that is fiber connected is a direct L3 neighbor (single network hop) to an ABR. We have aggressively pursued a program to reduce both the hardware and software variety of the university routed infrastructure. We have exercised greater discipline in the architecture of external connections such that routing complexity is also reduced. The net result of these initiatives is a legacy network, which is simultaneously faster, simpler, and more robust.

A positive side benefit of the campus upgrades is that every building currently connected to the backbone at 10Mbit half duplex can easily be upgraded to a 100Mbit full duplex connection (assuming the router itself can accommodate this connection). The backbone structure and capacity were improved irrespective of local buildings such that any of them can elect to have this upgrade.

TD has implemented a structured project methodology with prescribed stages on backbone projects. Each project is formally required to have concept, research, planning, staging, and execution phases. The enforcement of this approach has reduced implementation failures by catching problems early. In addition, the various phases help to solicit a wider range of opinions. Failure to execute the appropriate phases in accordance with a schedule results in an aborted execution and a rescheduling.

TD has designed and implemented a complete multicast solution on both the legacy network and RUNet 2000. While this was possible immediately on RUNet 2000, the legacy network could not support a Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) deployment until its topology had been made both more uniform and more shallow. Legacy network structure was realigned during the backbone rebuilds and this was followed by the deployment of a full PIM sparse mode deployment. Full multicast support on the legacy network will permit use of Service Location Protocol (SLP) such that Internet Protocol (IP) alternatives to proprietary protocols by Apple and Novell will function properly.

TD has historically utilized T1 (1.5Mbit leased lines) links as either backup links between campuses or primary links to sites that do not have direct fiber plant. The backup links have been reorganized to greatly simplify their overall topology while still providing full redundancy to their respective campuses. A primary feature of this restructuring collects one end of multiple T1 links into a DS3 (45Mbit leased line). This reduces the complexity of the delivery equipment greatly and is ultimately more cost effective than individually terminated T1s. In addition, this represents a single interface on the DS3 side which allowed TD to advocate T1 solutions to remote sites without requiring the customer to fund a separate serial interface on the backbone.

The university external handoffs were restructured completely to achieve better economies with no decrease in stability or performance. The historic providers for both Internet and Internet2 bandwidth no longer provided for good economy and service. TD leveraged the size and prestige of the university to forge better relationships with New Jersey (NJ) based providers. In addition, this restructuring, which consisted of forming Internet Service Provider (ISP) relationships with Bell Atlantic and AT&T, allowed for other economies based on other services purchased from these vendors. The university community ultimately benefited from increased bandwidth, which was immediately apparent, as external connectivity was increased by a factor of two.

TD deployed the data components for smart classrooms by designing local networking infrastructure, prescribing an interface to the building router, scheduling installation of cabling, and monitoring contractor performance. The following smart classrooms were deployed:

Hill 114

Hill 116

SERC - Room 117

Wright Labs Auditorium

Bartlett - Room 123

Van Dyck - Room 211

SCILS - Room 212

Lucy Stone Hall Auditorium

Beck - room 252

Though outside of the normal RUNet 2000 project schedule, TD identified an opportunity to deploy an RUNet 2000 class data network infrastructure to establish proof of concept. The Center for Law and Justice (CLJ) represented the largest, most complex, most advanced building network ever deployed by TD. Vertical infrastructure consisted entirely of full duplex 1000Mbit links with over 2000 10/100Mbit data ports deployed. All electronics were selected from RUNet 2000 approved parts lists and this installation relied heavily on VLAN technology.

The Network Plant and Projects (NPP) and Network Installation (NI) groups completed over 300 separate projects totaling over $650,000. These projects were conducted in accordance with the needs and desires of university customers.

TD completed other significant network projects at the following locations:

Center for Law and Justice

Davidson Dining Hall

Alcohol Studies

The Rutgers Athletic Center

Neuroscience

Waksman Addition

Walt Whitman Building Video Security

Newark Energy Management & Control Systems (EMCS) expansion

SCILS

Writing Laboratory, (135 George St.)

Douglass Chemistry Annex

Large scale building infrastructure design and installation in both Neuroscience and Chemistry were in direct support of high profile researchers with international recognition. The creation of facilities appropriate to their work was highly challenging while the results were very rewarding.

TD received, scheduled, and completed over 1500 Internal Purchase Order requests for telephone ads, moves and changes. In addition to standard requests for changes in service, TD received, scheduled and corrected over 2000 requests for telephone repair and over 1000 requests for MACStar line changes. Operations were handled quickly and efficiently yielding a net surplus in the clearing account in excess of $2M. This represented an all time high. Despite decreased calling levels within the Student Telephone System (STS), operational efficiencies still permitted a surplus equal to the previous year. There were 34 major voice projects completed at the university, including the installation of two Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs, small equivalent of a phone company central office installed on premises) and the first ever Primary Rate Interface (PRI) application for voice. In addition, TD managed 12 inside wiring voice projects completely from design through implementation.

TD, through the Dorm networking project, provided support to the RUNet 2000 project, which enabled numerous new Dorms to be brought onto the network. A list follows:

Frelinghuysen

Clothier

Brett

These installations increased the total number of wired beds from 6000 to 7300. While this net increase was only 15%, there was over a 100% increase in Dorm network usage during the same period. This is indicative of greater network demand within the student population. It is fully expected that demand will outpace deployment in subsequent years as well.

While the NOC focuses its attention internally on the data network, the Customer Service Center (CSC) focuses its attention externally on our university customers. The CSC provides for a single point of contact for all TD related issues and problems. The major accomplishment the Customer Service Center for this year was to get all the divisions within TD onto the problem tracking system.

In support of Rutgers' Internet2 initiative, network backbone infrastructure capable of delivering 100 megabits/second was built to the following buildings: Biomedical Engineering Modular, College of Pharmacy, CoRE Building, Engineering Buildings, Library of Science and Medicine, Nelson Biology Labs, Serin Physics Lab, Wright-Rieman Labs (Busch); Kilmer Library (Livingston); Graduate School of Education, Alexander Library (College Avenue); Douglass Library (Cook/Douglass); Aidekman Research Center (Newark). In addition, 100 megabits/second desktop connections were provided to the following faculty members: Helen Berman, chemistry; Grigore Burdea, CAIP; John Conway, physics; Thomas Devlin, physics; John Hughes, physics; Gabriel Kotliar, physics; David Langreth, physics; David Vanderbilt, physics; Ronald Levy, chemistry; Wise Young, biology; Steven Barnett, Graduate School of Education; John Young, Graduate School of Education; Carolyn Maher, Graduate School of Education; and multiple users in the Supercomputer Remote Access Center at Rutgers-Newark.

B. Computing Services

1. Camden Computing Services

FY 2000 Goals

Strategic Goals

General University Support

• Develop and implement plans for Novell, UNIX, NT and other operating system improvements.
• Coordinate and support Year 2000 activities across the campus aligned with central and local Y2K committees. Increase visibility and contact across the campus.
• Provide leadership to campus departments in developing their Information Technology (IT) needs and plans.
• Provide networking leadership for the campus to improve backbone services, assist in building design, communicate standards and assist in transitional networking plans. Prepare and assist building occupants for a smooth transition to RUNet 2000.
• Promote continued collaboration and cooperation with the Library and TEC staff in supporting computing components of the planned technology-based classrooms.
• Evaluate the Educational Series for improvements.

Instructional Support

• Provide IT leadership to the campus in the development and implementation of plans for public computing facilities on the campus.
• Encourage and assist faculty in developing web-based instructional materials for classroom presentations.

Research Support

• Encourage and support faculty participation in I2-related and other projects requiring information technology. Schedule I2, RUNet 2000 and Information Technology for the 21st Century presentations in Camden to encourage support for grant submissions.
• Participate in the integration and support for departmental outreach programs including distance learning and off campus instruction.

Outreach Support

• Gain knowledge of and assist in video distribution for distance learning programs.
• Collaborate with other departments planning for off campus programs.

Administrative Support

• Collaborate with administrative departments on campus to improve office workflow and assist in planning for their systems and software upgrades.

Operational Goals

• Improve front line service by developing and begin implementation of a plan to improve student assistants training through seminars, coaching, evaluations and support.
• Maintain communications to faculty, students and staff through paper mailings once per semester, E-mail through the campus REACT, student newspaper and online web announcements.
• Establish a separate student mail server for improved e-mail service.
• Continue staff participation in CTE teams to work on improving the Office of Information Technology and to foster the established Values.
• Further align services with the campus and institutional needs through participation on the Camden Academic Technology committee and communications with administrative offices, academic departments, and advisory councils.
• Plan for staff professional development to enhance their skills appropriately for their job function and growth.
• Develop a service strategy plan in coordination with the FAS dean and provost to best utilize the proposed FAS unit computing specialists.
• Assist faculty, staff and students in transition from the UNIX mail reader "mm" to either Pine or Netscape Mail through seminars, documentation and consultations.
• Develop a customer satisfaction evaluation plan and begin implementation
• Review and redefine as identified the Camden Help Desk process to improve efficiency within the Office of Information Technology while improving response to our community.

FY 2000 Accomplishments

Strategic

General University/Campus Support

• Planned and implemented operating systems improvements throughout the year: completely upgraded all OIT Sun systems to the latest OS (Solaris 7) at the start of the fiscal year and planning for the upgrade to Solaris 8 as the year ends; Science Vision SGI systems upgraded to the latest OS (Irix 6.5); installed, tested and implemented a high performance Sun E3500 server with six CPUs, especially useful for parallel computing; and Novell servers were upgraded to NetWare 5 in preparation for the move to IP only across the backbone.
• Year 2000 - The significant effort by staff for preparation, communication and planning for the changeover to the new year on January 1, 2000, paid off handsomely for Camden Computing Services as it did for most corporations throughout the world that evening. We did not experience any noticeable problems with our services. Camden Computing Services participated in the Camden Campus "Y2K Awareness Week" in October to inform everyone of the potential impact of Y2K on individual workstations and made available student staff to evaluate faculty and staff systems for Y2K compliance.
• Consultation with campus administrators on the PC Purchase program resulted in budget allocations from the schools at Camden to provide improved equipment mostly to faculty, but some student labs. The "subsidy" by central administration allowed for precious budget dollars to be spent wisely and to be "stretched" to other projects.
• Coordinated funds from Camden Computing Services, the Provost Office and Haskin Shellfish Research were used to hire one new full time staff member to improve services to FAS faculty, student labs and the research at Haskin.
• RUNet 2000 - Planning moved into implementation for the campus this year. Activities included: the campus backbone was upgraded tenfold to 100Mbs which included new redundant links and replacement of the three oldest routers; Business & Science building is in construction; Armitage Hall construction is set to start; the outside infrastructure design is almost complete; and a Telecommunication Analyst position was added to the Camden staff to meet the need of RUNet 2000 transition. The student system and key network support servers (DHCP/Bootp, DNS) were successfully moved to a new RUNet 2000 compatible subnet.
• Partnered with the Teaching Excellence Center to assist the Sociology faculty in developing streaming video for class.
• Camden Education Series introduced a new seminar entitled, "Basics of Windows 95/98" and provided six special School of Business classroom presentations along with the standard set of seminars offered in the fall and spring.
• Provided office assistance to a variety of departments throughout the year including Career Planning & Placement, Psychology, Financial Aid, Purchasing, Registrar, Health Services, and Financial Services.

Instructional Support

• Installed, tested and activated the equipment ordered for the public labs: twelve Sun Unix clients, nine Apple PowerMacs, fifty-eight Dell Pentiums (thirty-four installed by law staff), and nine Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printers. These upgrades kept the campus on the planned three-year life cycle for public computing systems maintaining the latest in technology for students.
• Cooperative purchases for student labs resulted in savings and/or better systems.
• Significant upgrades and improvements made to client workstations in the public labs: new Sun login screen setup (dtlogin) and a new desktop environment (CDE); upgraded all Macs to the latest version of MacOS (8.6); more reliable and faster access to software on the Mac clients through local storage of applications and utilizing keyserver software to distribute; and, the network in the labs running at 100Mbs.
• Dynamic IP addressing will be available for the upcoming year ("mobile plug-in access") through the installation of new Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol DHCP Server Software (provides logging and authentication capabilities).
• Streaming Audio and Video Server software was installed that allows faculty and staff to store multimedia presentations online for students and others to view using a web browser. OIT staff members are working closely with the department of Sociology to develop a RealServer application to provide streaming video for classroom enhancement. OIT staff installed, tested and will manage the server software on a central server while the faculty will work with the Teaching Excellence Center to develop the material and tape the programs that will be stored for presentations.
• Student disk space quotas (or limits) were doubled from 10MB to 20MB.

Research Support

• Camden Computing Services arranged for Mike McKay, Executive Director of Computing Services and Information Technology at Rutgers University, and Joseph Sanders, University Director/Telecommunication and Project Director, RUNet 2000, to lead a workshop on RUNet 2000/Internet 2/High Speed Applications at Rutgers.
• Rutgers-Camden joined sites in New Brunswick and Newark to become part of the Rutgers Computational Grid (RCG). Four dual processor PCs running Linux make up the Camden grid. Additionally, a 100Mbs link was installed to tie the High Performance Computer system to the 4th floor lab in the Business & Science building (which also was assigned an Internet 2 rating).
• The upgrade of the Camden faculty/staff Novell server improved dramatically the stability for the community.
• LEAP Academy faculty members were assigned access to the local server to provide a direct link to the Rutgers faculty working with them in developing their programs.

Outreach Support

• The LEAP academy in Camden was linked to RUNet 2000 and Rutgers as the first 'outreach' project activated under the Department of Education (DOE) grant.
• Staff members were active participants in the Academic Challenge program.
• A staff member provides regular consultations to the Washington Township Public school system in regards to their developing network and applications.
• The Summit on the Future of SJ was held in the fall with computer support provided so that Camden faculty members could demonstrate their activities throughout the day.
• Support for the National Youth Leadership Foundation Summer Program that brought close to 600 junior and senior high school students to the campus and the Camden Math Fair which hosts students from around the county for a day of outstanding demonstrations required computing assistance.

Administrative Support

• Provided staff support for the School of Business during the two months they did not have a Unit Computing Specialist (UCS).
• Organized a successful Administrative presentation in the spring to make the community aware of the latest services offered through web access (registration, grades, transcripts) and the status of Rutgers Enterprise Resource Planning (now known as the Rutgers Integrated Administrative System - RIAS)

Operational Accomplishments

• Developed a new curriculum for the Student Assistants Training Program which we will begin implementing in August. A first step was to improve communication of student staff with full time staff to report problems encountered in the labs immediately.
• An internal FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) was developed for our student staff to utilize in helping our customers.
• A Camden communication plan has been blueprinted, the matrix was bulleted and the plan discussed with other directors. Execution of the plan continues and is continually modified.
• Improved communications with the campus was a priority and was implemented through a variety of means: the initiation of a new ongoing series of articles in the Camden campus newspaper (the Gleaner ), a Camden Area report to Provosts & Deans following the area report submitted to the Executive Director for the president's report, offers to SBC faculty for classroom presentations, a Problem Reporting Form for students to submit, modification to the posted signs to include all methods to contact OIT, offer to attend the SBC student government meeting to discuss computing issues, and extended the offer to attend faculty department meetings and student organization meetings to inform them of the Office of Information Technology (RUNS) activities and services.
• Maintained communication with the campus through regular messages to REACT, messages in the Camden Computing Services Announcements section online, the newsletter published in September and March, the Annual Report published in October, updated orientation documents, and participation in campus orientations.
• New Campus email servers, one for faculty/staff and one for students, were installed, tested and are passing through the stages of production with the first complete phase providing for a true mail address of " @camden.rutgers.edu " for the community.
• Participation in the final reports for the Process Identification and Performance Indicators teams along with the other new OIT teams developed during the year to plan, test, and implement cross-divisional services (such as, Peoples Data Base, RUNet 2000 transitioning, Account Creation).
• OIT staff met with various groups throughout the year to maintain communications about the services provided and what direction OIT should consider. Such meetings included the Academic Technology committee to discuss computing for the campus for academic areas, various departments as a result of the offer to the chairs (including Nursing, Social Work, and Psychology), regular meetings with Deans, and the FAS IS committee meetings.
• With staff development and training a priority to maintain an effective work group, the limited budget was allocated to provide training to small, local seminars for most staff, two hands-on training programs, and attendance at two conferences/training courses during the year Association for Computing Machinery-Special Interest Group University and College Computing Services (ACM SIGUCCS) where a paper was presented and Educause). Most staff attended either the customer satisfaction or leadership seminars offered by QCI.
• As part of the commitment to the Provost and FAS Dean, OIT participated fully in the interview and selection processes for two new UCS' - one position filled in the fall and the second is about to be filled.
• In order to assist the community in the transition from the Unix mail reader "mm" to either Pine or Netscape Mail, special seminars were held in January, along with the opportunity for one-on-one sessions.
• A customer satisfaction plan was developed that resulted in surveys of our student population in both December and April with results indicating satisfaction with most services above 85%. Also, faculty focus groups were held in the spring and staff focus groups are scheduled for the fall. Input from the surveys and focus groups have assisted us in making improvements to services.
• A Camden team evaluated the existing Help Desk operation and made several recommendations for improving the services. When resources were available, most recommendations were either implemented during the year or scheduled to be implemented over the summer.
• The new account creation process was implemented which made the process more reliable, faster, and more user friendly with a web-based front end.
• Dorm service improved with the addition of a second student technician. Systems removed from the public labs were installed by Student Life into the dorm rooms to provide access to RUNet for a portion of the complexes.

Special Accomplishments

• Debbie Mojta presented "Facilitating Netscape Use in a Public PC Lab" at the November ACM SIGUCCS Conference with follow up articles in the Camden On Campus and Focus.

Summary of Major Services

Camden Computing Services continued to support the basic infrastructure for electronic mail, web and directory services for the campus. Camden servers processed roughly 171,000 email messages per week for the campus. REACT lists were maintained on the two main campus servers (one for faculty/staff and one for students) to send regular (minimally weekly) announcements to the campus.

Instructors wanting to provide hands-on computer training to students can reserve instructional microcomputer labs. In Camden, the labs were used 19 times during the summer terms for a total of 383 hours, 37 times during the fall term for a total of 709 hours, and 31 times during the spring term for a total of 913 hours. In Camden, there were 5,196 student accounts, 270 alumni accounts, 950 faculty/staff accounts and 20 departmental accounts.

On the Camden campus, staff handled 2,576 walk-in questions and 473 telephone questions from students, faculty, and staff. Public computing labs provided a broad range of services to students during the fiscal year. In Camden, public computing labs were open for about 40,250 hours. During this time there were 206,585 PC/Mac logins from the public labs to the server covering 64,162 hours of system usage. Short hands-on workshops or lecture/demonstration type seminars on various supported software and systems are presented every semester (note MAC logins only recorded for year).

We are committed to maintaining and increasing the number and content of the documentation describing the services and applications offered to the community in Camden. The Camden Computing Services website is updated regularly while the entire set of documentation is stored online. Of particular value to our customers are the online weekly announcements, the HELP section, and the New User section. Fall and Spring News flyers were produced and distributed widely across the Camden campus to inform the community about changes, new services, service improvements and other computing activities of interest. All articles include web addresses for further information.

Infrastructure

Campus Computing Facilities

OIT directors from all three campuses continued the practice to coordinate one large purchase order for new computers in instructional labs. For Camden, this resulted in both a saving and an improved system over what would have been purchased independently on the sixty systems ordered through the Rutgers Computer Store.

As work progresses on RUNet 2000 across the Camden campus, the following are the highlights for the year: interior wiring was designed and started in the Business & Science building; final designs for Armitage Hall interior wiring is complete and installation will commence in July; the outside plant (OSP) was designed and redesigned to take into consideration the recent purchases of houses along Cooper Street; the campus backbone for the legacy network was upgraded from 10Mbs to 100Mbs to improve speed across the campus; and all Routers on the campus were reconfigured to the latest Cisco software and the oldest of the building routers were replaced and/or upgraded to meet the demands from the buildings.

Organization - Management and Staffing

Recommendations of the CTE teams were implemented as follows: the Help Desk process was reviewed and reorganized resulting in improved services to the community; a complete communication plan was developed and is being implemented; students are surveyed each semester for their input into our services; and, faculty and staff focus groups are held yearly to gather input improvements and to foster cooperation.

At the conclusion of Fiscal Year 99/00, Camden had 9.5 Full time, 4.6 Auxiliary, 2 Type 4 and 23 Type 5 staff (this includes two TD staff members assigned to Camden and the ICI funded lines). These full-time employees worked in the following areas:

Area	# of Employees
Administration and Clerical	1
Applications Development/Maintenance	0
Management	2
Network Engineer	0
Network Technician	1
Operations/Production	1
Systems	6.6
User Services and Support	2.5

No Reclassifications occurred in Camden.

Camden Computing Services was assigned 2 new positions this year. Two promotions have occurred which will result in two new employees hired to fill these vacated positions. These new positions are in the following areas:

Area	# of Employees
Management	1
Network Technician	1

To maintain a high quality, motivated workforce, it is vital to ensure that training and professional development is made available to those who want or need it. Nine (9) employees from Camden received instruction during the fiscal year.

Public Awareness

In Camden, OIT continued to send service updates to students, faculty, and staff through the weekly REACT emails. Offers were extended to all departments for staff to make a fifteen minute presentation to note services available, similar offers were made to student organizations to promote services, and two presentations were made on campus (one on RUNet 2000 and Internet2, and the other on administrative applications available on the web as noted previously).

2. New Brunswick Computing Services

FY 2000 Goals

General Access Services

• Maintain stability of key services, particularly the CCF labs and support infrastructure, and central services run by Network Services and Systems and Operations
• Implement new training and management program for CCF student staff
• Reengineer email, designed for use from the desktop [1999/2000 will most likely only take us through the design phase.]
• Improve central web services, specifically search engine and maps. Other services may be agreed on jointly with University web support committee

Departmental Services

• Finish creating UNIX support group, including security incident handling
• Move departments from Track to TINT
• RUNet 2000: provide leadership and staffing for RUNet 2000 implementation, particularly in the areas of the departmental transition plan and PC support services
• PC strategy: develop strategic plan for PC support services, including standard software, software distribution tools, and remote administration
• Make systematic efforts to find all computing staff in departments; make sure they know about services available to them.
• Begin implementation of distributed support model on at least one additional campus [if funded]

User Services

• Reorganize NB web pages
• Work with HR to do training of departmental staff in email and web-related areas.
• Provide user training and support for ACS email transition
• Finish new training facility in Hill basement
• Implement recommendations of Service Strategy Task Force in consulting and help desk areas. This includes implementing support standards, preparing the help desk to act as first-level support for all the Office of Information Technology services, and developing a plan to monitor the quality of services.
• Put FAQ's into production, including contributions from all major areas, and regular review of data.

FY 2000 Accomplishments

The Reorganization

NBCS participated in a significant reorganization of OIT. This caused two major changes for NBCS:

• The Computer Store and Computer Repair were moved into NBCS.
• NBCS was split into two areas, each of which has a new Director in charge.

By combining the Computer Store and Computer Repair with the existing Microcomputer Support Services Group, NBCS should be in a better position to provide a full range of PC support services. The PC Purchase Advantage program is a good example of this: it used resources from both areas.

The reorganization created two areas within NBCS, each with its own Director:

• User and departmental support, and PC technology
• Central services, and Unix technology

This change is intended to let NBCS leadership focus on small enough areas to make significant progress. The new Directors are planning initiatives to address several of our key priorities. The existing Director has been named a University Director. In addition to providing overall leadership for campus computing, this position will be responsible for technical planning and development.

General Access Services

Most students use our systems. There are about 31,000 normal student accounts on Eden, with a student body of 34,420 in New Brunswick. Both the student body and the number of accounts increased by about 1000 since last year. 55% of the 18,598 eligible faculty and staff have accounts on the New Brunswick central system, RCI. (The count of 18,598 includes faculty and staff in Newark and Camden.) One other way to judge usage is to look at registered email addresses. 53% of the faculty and staff have email addresses registered in the People Database. Of these, about 56% use Computing Services central facilities (including RCI, Eden, and the equivalents at Newark and Camden). 33% use departmental facilities at Rutgers, and 10% use non-Rutgers facilities. The percent using Computing Services facilities is the same as last year. There is a 2% decrease in departmental facilities and a corresponding 2% increase in non-Rutgers facilities.

Total usage in the public micro labs has been essentially constant since 1996/97, with a small peak in 1997/98. Here are the changes since last year:

Total	Busch	College Ave.	Cook/Douglas	Livingston
-1%	+4%	-5%	+1%	+1%

It is not surprising that there has been a slight decrease in the last two years: The dorms are being wired at a rapid rate. We're expecting to see a similar small decrease in lab usage during 2000/1, during dorm wiring will be finished for at least 90% of the beds. In later years we expect to see a slow increase, as usage of computers continues to grow.

For this year, we made a major change in several closely connected services. These services are all driven from information about faculty, staff, and students. The most visible services are the online phone/email directory and the process used to create new accounts.

This project had both internal and external goals:

• Allowing students to control what information about them is released through the online directory
• Moving account creation to a web-based process
• Reducing the level of problems with account creation
• Allowing us to create accounts for new faculty and staff before they are in the payroll database

This was a joint project between NBCS and Administrative Computing Services (ACS). ACS created a new "People Database", which gets data feeds from the Student Records Database, Payroll, and other sources. This database correlates all information that we have about a given person. NBCS created a new web-based account creation and management system.

The project met its goals. However existing database about people and their accounts was not in good shape. The new software greatly improves things for people whose data is correct. It makes sure we capture good data for new people. But cleaning up data about existing users continues to be a major ongoing project.

There will be a second phase of the account creation software for September 2000. This is needed to deal with slowdowns during the first few weeks of September, when a large number of students are creating accounts at the same time.

Last year we began a process for creating mailing lists based on administrative data. That process was redesigned to use the new People Database. We can now create mailing lists based on a variety of fields in the student and payroll data.

During this year we saw creation of a full set of University-wide lists. These have been used by the University President and a number of administrative offices to make a variety of announcements. Several colleges and campuses now use the lists for weekly bulletins to students. This will replace the official announcements that were previously published in The Targum . There are online archives, so that students, faculty and staff can look up announcements that they missed originally.

There are currently about 150 automatically generated mailing lists. These lists cover students by year in most colleges, as well as faculty and staff both by campus and University-wide. Faculty and staff are available using the mail codes that have been used for paper mail.

The official mailing lists place a much higher demand on email delivery than previously. We are now seeing email regularly to 30,000 or more people. NBCS have made a continuing set of changes to email servers to keep up with this load. While we have survived the increased volumes, we are not yet able to deliver email to every member of the Rutgers community quickly enough that email can be used for time-critical announcements such as snow closings. That will be a goal for work being done in the next two years.

Many individuals and departments depend upon NBCS services in one way or another to support their web pages. The most visible is our web-hosting service. 5154 students and 2073 faculty, staff and departments maintain web pages using our central servers. On RCI there are 328 departmental accounts. These are accounts associated with departments or projects rather than individuals. Almost all of these were created to host departmental web pages.

RCI now supports a fairly complete set of web services. These include

• Virtual hosts. a mechanism that allows us to host web pages for a department using a name such as careerservices.rutgers.ed u rather than the somewhat obscure www.rci.rutgers.edu/~careerservices . That is, users see it as a departmental site rather than a part of RCI.
• Processing forms. We have a standard form application that allows results to be sent via email or collected in a file.
• Web applications programming. We support web applications written in the PHP3 language. PHP is a standard web applications language that is used widely by ISP's and others. We also support MySQL, a high-performance SQL database. The combination of PHP and MySQL is particularly good for web applications that need to use a database.
• Web log analysis. We now make usage data available for each virtual host.

PHP, MySQL, and the web log analysis are new features this year. Most of the growth of virtual hosts has also occurred during this year.

In addition to the web hosting services on RCI and Eden, our most visible service is the University search engine. During this year, we changed from an older version of Netscape Compass to Ultraseek. In the process of this upgrade, we looked carefully at how the search engine ordered results. Many people had complained that the results of a search weren't very useful. The search engine tended to find out of date information and student pages mentioning the topic before current official information. We have tuned these results so that official data is almost always at the top.

There are some additional services for hostmasters, including the ability to request the search engine to re-index their site, and the ability to construct search pages that cover just one departmental or personal site.

Departmental Services

A good deal of effort went into preparing for Year 2000. This included:

• a review of hardware and software for the systems we operate
• preparing recommendations for departments doing their own reviews
• support for departments doing upgrades
• developing and implementing a plan for the transition period early in 2000

There were few problems with the transition to 2000. We believe this is due to the hard work both of OIT and others throughout the campus. We did find a number of problems that would have been serious had they not been attended to.

Several of the scientific departments asked us to improve support for departments that use Unix. During this year we have started a Unix support group. It currently contains one person. We are recruiting for another. This group has helped a number of departments with urgent problems (particularly in the security area). It has prepared online resources of various kinds aimed at departmental UNIX staff. Longer-term efforts include a reexamination of the way departments administer UNIX systems. Out of this we will be implementing a new set of tools for software distribution and system configuration.

The University is seeing an increasing level of attacks, both against University facilities and against facilities outside the University using University equipment. Attacks using University equipment are almost always the result of outsiders' getting into our systems, although we do occasionally see students doing improper things. This year we have created a security and abuse-handling group. It currently has two people for whom this is their primary function, and several additional staff that spend a significant amount of time on security and abuse handling. These staff monitor email addresses such as abuse@rutgers.edu , which are used by people both within Rutgers and outside to report attacks. They have also started a variety of proactive approaches to identify potential problems. This includes automated scans of University systems for known security risks. The security group is also examining products such as firewalls. In the process of dealing with security and abuse issues, this group ends up doing a good deal of consulting with departments. They have helped departments assess the impact of compromises, and improve various aspects of security about their system. When we report problems to a department, we expect to help them resolve the problem. NBCS now chairs an interdivisional Computer Incident Response Team. While NBCS staff does most of the day to day work of incident handling, the interdivisional team is advising us as we develop policies and procedures.

The Microcomputer Systems Support Group (MSSG) has coordinated the response to viruses and similar dangers. This includes both anti-virus resources and help in dealing with viruses. MSSG coordinated a site license for McAfee anti-virus products. This is the first time the University has done a site license for such products covering both University-owned equipment and equipment owned by faculty, staff and students. The implementation included setting up an online way of distributing the software securely. Unfortunately McAfee did not protect the University from the "I Love You" mail attack. MSSG spent at least a week helping departments recover from this attack. As a result of this, MSSG has started approaches more powerful than the traditional anti-virus software. MSSG has issued its own software to prevent against some classes of email attack. They are investigating more general solutions.

University departments have limited staff to administer systems. One of our long-term goals is to develop strategies and services to help reduce the amount of manpower departments need to use for routine tasks. This is an ongoing project, that will take several years. During this year, we have made progress in several areas:

• Support for a limited set of standardized software, through the software-licensing component of the PC Advantage program.
• Development of automated software distribution. This will be done primarily in future years, however McAfee anti-virus software is currently being distributed this way.
• Initial assessment of Microsoft Active Directory and Novell's NDS. Full use of either of these products will require some central infrastructure. We are in the process of finalizing an approach for Active Directory.

The Computer Store and the Microcomputer Systems Support Group (both a part of NBCS) coordinated the OIT portion of the PC Advantage program. This was a program with two major goals:

• To encourage departments to get standardized, high-quality hardware and software.
• To get improved pricing by coordinating a single, large purchase

Both of these goals were achieved. OIT worked with the Office of Academic Affairs to implement a major bulk purchase. NBCS staff did the vendor negotiations, and handled the logistics of ordering and delivering. We achieved about 35% savings from the best educational deals with Sun equipment. Data for PC purchases was harder to quantify, but appears to represent several hundred dollars per purchase. In addition to hardware savings, we were able to get quantity discounts on a variety of commonly used software.

While RUnet 2000 will provide greatly improved network service, it requires significant work on the part of departments whose networks are included. Departmental staff will need to survey equipment and users in their department, prepare information to be used by staff installing the new network, and make a variety of changes to both servers and desktop systems in the department. During this year, an interdivisional OIT taskforce has developed a good deal of material for departments that will be going through the RUnet 2000 transition process. This includes background material, requirement documents, process descriptions, templates, and examples. TD and NBCS staff has prepared most of this material. NBCS expects to assign a staff member to departments going through the transition, unless it is clear that the department does not need help. This staff member will advise the department on the process, and do portions of it that departmental staff can't do on their own. During this year the first of these departmental support efforts was started. There will be many more in the coming years. NBCS expects to need a total of three people assigned to this during the peak of RUnet 2000 activity. We are in the process of recruiting for the necessary staff.

User Services

This was the first year for the new management program for student staff in the labs. This is a comprehensive program, involving increased training, more structured supervision and evaluation, and a recognition program. The first portion of the training is done during the summer before an employee starts work. Previously, a substantial number of the staff covering the labs in September had received almost no training.

Here are some summary statistics for this program:

Summer 99 training	>100 New Consultants 18 hours of training each
Spring 00 hiring	196 people selected
Evaluations	Between 500 and 750 formal evaluations conducted
Recognition	About 70 awards given
User feedback	Over 20 reports thanking consultants
Continuing training	35 class sessions in Spring 00 450 attendees to these sessions

During this year we began implementing the recommendations of Service Strategy Task Force in consulting and help desk areas. This includes implementing support standards, preparing the help desk to act as first-level support for all services offered by OIT , and developing a plan to monitor the quality of services.

This is an ongoing effort, which will span several years. For this year the focus was on training and on improving coordination among help operations in the various OIT divisions, both with each other and with areas where new services are being developed.

During this year, the Frequently Asked Questions database was put into production. This is a web-based system containing the information most commonly asked of our user support staff.

3. Newark Computing Services

FY 2000 Goals

a. Computing and Information Technology

• Provide university-wide leadership in the integration of information technology resources to support the missions and activities of the campus.
• Provide leadership, advice and direction to the campus computing committees.
• Provide campus leadership in the development and continuous change of the public computing facilities to meet the needs of the campus.
• Enhance the Education Series by improving the quality and scope of courses offered.
• Encourage and support faculty research through participation in Internet 2 and implementation of RUNet 2000.
• Promote departmental support through the departmental coordinators and the distributed support model.
• Promote and expand the collaboration and cooperation between Computing Services, the Teaching Excellence Center (TEC), and the library.

b. Community Service and Support

• Facilitate campus outreach programs through departmental consulting and support.

c. Customer Service and Support

• Improve customer satisfaction with services provided.
• Design and rewrite web pages to align with University Computing Services' web pages and to reflect services provided to the campus.
• Improve operation and staffing of the student labs through development of appropriate policies, improved hiring, training and supervision of lab assistants, and improved reporting and repair of hardware and software.
• Improve operation of CS-Net group through implementation of trouble reporting and tracking application.

d. Connectivity

• Support the implementation of RUNet 2000 through leadership and participation in campus planning and preparation.
• Provide leadership in supporting existing campus local area networks transitioning to RUNet 2000.

e. Communication

• Develop and carry out a communications plan to inform the campus faculty, staff, and students of the mission, function and responsibilities of Computing Services.

FY 2000 Accomplishments

Computing and Information Technology

Goal: Provide university-wide leadership in the integration of information technology resources to support the missions and activities of the campus

Status:

• Configuration of all central systems is undergoing review and redefinition to align with the campus needs, to improve reliability and efficiency of the resources, and to relieve manual and attended maintenance requirements. As currently configured, campus systems cannot easily accommodate expanded technology functions requiring significant effort and time to put into place. Because staffing for a 24x7 operation is not available, systems must run reliably providing notification and remote access when problems occur. The revised systems plan will be flexible enough to accommodate changing technical requirements with as little manual intervention as possible.
• Of highest priority in this plan, are disk redundancy, swappable disk, automated backup, and centralized power backup. Following this plan, technicians installed a disk subsystem with raid storage and hot swappable spare disks that will integrate the storage needs of the Unix and NT servers. This subsystem allows easy expansion for new campus storage requirements as they become known and is the first step to increasing the quota sizes of faculty and students. An automated backup system for the Novell servers was also installed. This system provides backup of all lab servers during one operation and without operator intervention.
• Also important in providing reliable user services, the separation of system services onto distributed equipment streamlines access to the service as well as on-going maintenance of the software. Two new servers were installed in the Pegasus cluster, and the services running on all Pegasus systems were realigned.
• Because much of the work carried out by the staff involves sharing information, maintaining accuracy, version control, and security of the information is crucial. A centralized server for departmental functions was installed providing centralized file storage and file access. Along with this, records of lab operation are now maintained centrally with controlled access.
• A fundamental aspect of the transition to RUNet 2000 includes changing a large number of IP addresses. To facilitate this change in preparation for transition, a DHCP server was installed and DHCP implemented for the Center for Law and Justice, Engelhard Hall lab, and Blumenthal Hall. As transition progresses, DHCP will be serving the entire campus.
• Preparation for Year 2000 included analysis and resolution of non-compliance for all departmental systems, and providing guidance and support to campus departments needing assistance. Computing Services met with representatives of all departments on a regular basis to plan for Y2K and to provide technical information. All campus departments transitioned smoothly into the new year with only two reported user problems quickly resolved by downloading a new version of the problem application.
• Software and systems within computing services were upgraded or replaced as necessary and also transitioned smoothly into the new year. The repair and installation unit provided similar support services to campus departments.
• A new NetWare server was installed in the Center for Law and Justice to meet the needs of the labs in the new building;
• Workstations were upgraded for eleven staff members eliminating previous memory and disk limitations.
• Operating systems in eight centralized servers were upgraded.

Goal: Provide leadership, advice and direction to the campus computing committees

Status:

• The Campus Computing Planning Committee has undergone transition during this year and will become active again soon. Several staff members participate in ad hoc committee activities including the development of standards for the smart classroom and the installation of smart classroom equipment; planning a campus program of computer application workshops for staff; and the campus web committee. Committees focused on specific areas of computing will also become more active this next year.

Goal: Provide campus leadership in the development and continuous change of the public computing facilities to meet the needs of the campus

Status:

• NCS has expanded the functionality of the instructional labs; improvements have been made in the software available, trouble reporting and resolution, and instructional equipment available within the labs. The net-ops application was installed in two instructional labs, providing instructors with control of all computers in the lab. Images on any computer can be shared with other course participants or the instructor. The instructor has full control of all workstations, focusing the attention of the participants on the topic under discussion.
• New projectors and electric screens were installed in three labs replacing the portable, cumbersome, and low quality projectors that were previously used in these areas.
• Equipment problems are a normal consequence of public lab operations. Changes in the reporting and tracking process have improved the turnaround time for these situations dramatically. This year, average time to complete a workstation repair was 1.12 days, with 57.5% of the repairs made on the same day as reported.
• Renovation of the Engelhard Lab was completed combining two smaller labs into one larger lab. Workstation space for each user was increased to 36", more than the space available in other campus labs. Three areas of the lab were designed to allow students to work collaboratively on projects, with one or more of them having access to a computer. All workstation equipment in the lab was replaced with new Dell computers, and the network was installed to meet RUNet 2000 standards.

Goal: Enhance the Education Series by improving the quality and scope of courses offered

Status :

• Planning for the Education Series was competed with a committee representing the Computing Services, TEC, and Dana library. Because each unit offers a set of workshops, coordinated planning avoided overlap and distributed the workshops according to the expertise of the department.
• This year, the Education Series focused on the technical areas of Unix, web pages, Windows, Macintosh, Microsoft Office, Netscape, E-mail and SAS. Length of the series was expanded from one to two months, with each class offered two to eight times. Sixteen unique workshops were offered with total attendance of 862 people. Evaluations were positive, but the format did not allow for a percentage summary of satisfaction. The evaluation will be reviewed and revised for future workshops. All staff members participated in some way in preparing, presenting, and supporting the presenter of the workshops.
• The Education Series has improved over the past two years and this goal will be removed for next year. Instead, the focus will be on continuous improvement for this area.

Goal: Encourage and support faculty research through participation in Internet 2 and implementation of RUNet 2000

Status:

• No significant progress on this goal has been made, and it will continue to be a focus for the coming year.

Goal: Promote departmental support through the departmental coordinators and the distributed support model

Status:

• Several departments now have a technology support person to plan and carry out the technical needs of the department. In some cases, computing services maintains the servers for the department. Whenever possible, the support person was trained in system operation and provided with an appropriate level of permissions to maintain accounts and passwords for their staff members and groups of students. With this capability, reliance on computing services for minor system changes was eliminated resulting in faster response to their direct needs.
• This goal will continue to receive consideration in the next year, as a campus committee will be named to assist in the development of a campus support model.

Goal: Promote and expand the collaboration and cooperation between Computing Services, the TEC, and the library

Status:

• Computing Services is worked in cooperation with the TEC and Dana Library to develop a coordinated set of instructional workshops for the campus. This effort is on going and will continue into the next year as the workshops are finalized. These workshops are planned to meet the needs of faculty and staff in the use of standard computer applications.
• Planning for additional installation and support of smart classrooms is underway with representatives from the faculty, physical plant, TEC, Dana Library, and Computing Services. The outcomes of the planning will be a standard configuration for each of the smart classrooms and a process for support of the equipment and the faculty using the classrooms. This committee will continue its work into the next year.

Community Service and Support

Goal: Facilitate campus outreach programs through departmental consulting and support

Status:

• Outreach programs created by academic departments are directed towards public school students and community entrepreneurs. Often these programs include a learning section on or about technology. The campus again sponsored the Prudential computer camp for local public school students. During this 3-week camp, middle and high school students experienced college life, attended workshops in math, science and computers. NCS supported the camp by assisting in the computer training of the session.
• The Greater Newark Small Business Consortium presented a half-day seminar for local business people to learn and sharpen their computer skills. NCS provided assistance with the applications and lab monitoring to assist the professor.
• NCS continued a relationship with Training Inc. a grant-funded program of the Community and Continuing Education Division of Essex County College by membership on the advisory board, mentor relationships, and an intern program for students.

Customer Service and Support

Goal: Improve customer satisfaction with services provided

Status:

• The pilot customer satisfaction survey was announced to all faculty and staff. The survey addressed all areas of support activities including administration, installation and repair services, lab availability and support, and system support. The announcement was an e-mail message was sent to all administration asking them to participate in the web-based survey. Analysis of the pilot data indicated that our services are generally considered to be satisfactory, but no firm conclusions can be drawn from the survey categories. To provide specific information on which to make operational changes the rating categories will be revised.

Goal: Design and rewrite web pages to align with OIT's web pages and to reflect services provided to the campus

Status:

• A committee of NCS and external people reviewed the informational needs of the campus and identified the areas to be addressed by the web pages. Following this direction, the pages were rewritten, reviewed by the committee and again revised. Pages continue to be enhanced, expanded and added as demonstrated by requirements and as improvements are suggested. The committee will continue to provide oversight and recommendations for changes to the web pages.
• This goal will be removed from the 2001 goals but the activity will continue to be reviewed and improved.

Goal: Improve operation and staffing of the student labs through development of appropriate policies, improved hiring, training and supervision of lab assistants, and improved reporting and repairs of hardware and software

Status

• Two years ago, the Newark campus computing planning committee approved the implementation of a Site Manager program for the student labs. The program began with a pilot of two site managers at Dana Library and the Law School providing the opportunity to further define, document and revise the expected duties and responsibilities of the managers. The program has been very successful resulting in stabilized consultant coverage, improved record keeping, and a smoother functioning operation. An outgrowth of the program indicated that a slight change in site manager duties allowed coverage at more areas than anticipated and a decrease in the total number of site managers needed. The program has been expanded to four Site Managers providing oversight of all but one campus lab.
• Employment and training of lab assistants have been incorporated into an orderly process that includes interviewing, hiring and extensive training. Both the Site Manager and the Lab Manager interview applicants for consultant positions making hiring decisions in consultation with each other. The training program has been formalized as a 3-day program that includes policies, procedures, site specific information, and technical skill enhancement. Several staff members participate in the training program that includes additional instructions and workshops on Unix and Microsoft applications.

Goal: Improve operation of CS-Net group through implementation of trouble reporting and tracking application

Status

• A centralized trouble reporting and tracking application for installation and repair service has been developed that records relevant information about a job such as the status, estimated time and cost, actual time and cost, and payment authorizations.

Connectivity

Goal: Support the implementation of RUNet 2000 through leadership and participation in campus planning and preparation

Status

• NCS supports RUNet 2000 activities on campus through assistance to the implementation team on campus, providing informational notices to the campus regarding planned construction activities, identifying building contacts for building meeting, and participating in building meetings.

Goal: Provide leadership in supporting existing campus local area networks transitioning to RUNet 2000

Status:

• NCS representatives have participated in the interdivisional RUNet 2000 planning committees, and several employees are actively developing a transition plan for the Newark campus. Two staff members have been hired to lead, plan, and implement transition for each of the campus buildings, as they become ready. Currently, Blumenthal Hall is nearing RUNet 2000 completion. The transition team has met with the building occupants to commence transition, identify the information that must be collected, and complete the building survey. As the first campus building to undergo transition, Blumenthal Hall will provide a trial of the work processes and will identify issues and activities that require additional analysis and revision.

Communication

Goal: Develop and carry out a communications plan to inform the campus faculty, staff, and students of the mission, function and responsibilities of Computing Services

Status:

• A communication plan was developed that included a framework for advising campus faculty, staff, and students of the activities and functions of Computing Services. Strategies for communicating with all audiences were developed and most have been implemented.
• The NCS newsletter was created and distributed electronically, with a short message to all administration of its availability on the web. The newsletter will be prepared two or three times yearly with information and articles contributed by several staff members.
• NCS utilizes the OIT brochure as a handout at all gatherings and in follow-up circumstances for faculty or staff. The brochures are available in all student labs. In addition, campus specific brochures have been developed that provide information about the labs and CS-Net services.
• Campus e-mail lists have been created for Novell support personnel, Unix support personnel, and a set of unique contacts across the campus for use in unusual situations requiring immediate notification of a campus issue.
• Other methods of communicating with campus personnel include the following: lab announcements; Newark Accountability Report; automated mailing lists; Message of the Day for Unix logins; and annual meetings with Deans, Associate Deans and other faculty personnel.

Additional Accomplishments

A prioritized training and development plan has been created for all staff members that encompasses our needs for specific skills, cross training, enhanced personal skill development, and future needs. Because of the need for Unix knowledgeable staff, the emphasis is on a wide and deep training in this area. These needs are filled through attendance at formal third party training sessions and less formal in-house workshops. Whenever possible, we take advantage of vendor shows, conferences self-study initiatives. This year, staff members attended the following:

PC Expo, MAC Expo, Project Management, Tech Day, Unix System Administration I, Unix System Administration II, Unix Security, Windows NT 5.0, QCI Leadership Program, Team Building QCI, Conflict Management, Time Management, Cisco Switch Configuration, Educause 99, and Internet Expo.

All staff members attended a workshop on the Pay For Performance process providing them with the expectations from both supervisors and those supervised. Each staff member had an opportunity to ask questions about how the process would affect them and both staff and supervisors had an opportunity to discuss the process from their unique points of view.

A CIF-Repair database was designed to log and track all problems reported on lab equipment. Specific information on each type of problem enables accurate reporting on the types of problems most often experienced, the length of time to complete the repair, and the reoccurrence of a problem. Statistics showed that 585 problems were reported from the CIF labs on campus with 353 or 60.3% fixed on the same day and another 153 or 26.2% fixed within 1-2 days.

Questions asked and answered in the labs are not tracked due to the extensive time required to document this active area, but questions placed to the help telephone line, the help@pegasus , and help@andromesa are tracked to some degree. During the coming year, the content of these questions will also be maintained in a database to be developed. This year, consultants handling these areas answered the following number of questions:

• Phone calls - 855
• help@pegasus and help@andromeda - 754

Although just getting started, the transition team of two staff members have completed 90% of Blumenthal Hall. The building will be ready to transition to the new network as soon as the electronics are fully in place and tested. The transition process consists of an initial meeting with all building contacts, interested personnel, RUNet 2000 representatives, NCS management, and the transition team. Each person receives a folder prepared for the process that includes documentation on the project, the team members, and information required to transition. Forms to be completed are distributed in hard copy and on floppy disk. After the initial meeting, regular meetings are held at 2-week intervals or longer if the situation warrants.

NCS staff has worked with Student Affairs to enhance the orientation and registration process. Students new to the campus meet with the appropriate academic advisors and have an opportunity to create their computer account with the assistance of NCS staff. This process has enabled most of the account creation problems to be resolved at the time students are making their accounts. During registration, students have access to two labs to complete their registration process on-line while advisors and technical support personnel are available to help with any issues that come up.

A database to record and track all work requested and completed by the CS-Net group has been created. With this information regarding each job, comparison of estimated and actual costs can be compared, expected start and completed times can be compared with actual start and completion times, and payment or services can be easily monitored and summarized.

C. RUNet 2000

RUNet 2000 is a four-year, $100 million effort aimed at creating an advanced data, video and voice communications infrastructure for the university. The infrastructure will strengthen Rutgers' ability to address workforce development through outreach and reeducation programs and expand the reach of the Rutgers network to include K-12 schools and other New Jersey educational institutions.

Believed to be the largest single project of its kind at any American university, RUNet 2000 will complete, upgrade and expand the existing Rutgers network. The project will provide faster and easier access to the Internet and university computing resources from on- and off-campus locations. It will make it possible for Rutgers to use advanced video and multimedia communication and instructional tools and will provide private university-wide cable television services in residence halls, libraries and selected classrooms. It also will upgrade wiring so that Rutgers can take advantage of advanced voice capabilities.

FY 2000 Goals

• Develop and publish technical networking standards to facilitate a smooth migration from the legacy network to the RUNet 2000 network
• Complete outside plant construction on the Busch and Livingston campuses
• Provide connections to Internet2 recipients as chosen by the Research Advisory Board
• Develop a budget/work progress report structure to keep administration informed with formal monthly reports
• Establish a communication plan which ties directly to the project schedule and is easily understood by all members of the university community

FY 2000 Accomplishments

Much effort this year was aimed at integrating the efforts of staff in the Telecommunications Division with staff in the campus divisions to affect plans for transitioning computers to the new network. Protocols and instructions were developed for IP readdressing and eliminating the use of AppleTalk and IPX/Novell networks. Technical standards and instructions were created and published on the website, http://runet2000i.rutgers.edu , to assist OIT staff in working with departmental computer staff to achieve smooth transition processes.

Conduit and manhole installation to house the fiber optic network backbone was completed on the Busch and Livingston campuses and begun on the Newark campus. By the start of next academic year, that installation will be completed in Newark and will have started on the College Avenue and Cook/Douglass campuses.

Fiber installation also began during the fiscal year. By the start of fall semester, fiber optic cable will connect about 90 buildings, providing enhanced data services to 48 buildings and video services to 41 buildings. To accommodate these services, wiring was completed in 12 academic buildings and 27 residence halls on the Busch, College Avenue, Douglass, Livingston, and Newark campuses. By the start of the next academic year, wiring will be completed in an additional 16 academic buildings and 23 residence halls on all campuses.

Monthly reports containing information about construction and wiring, the Rutgers Television Network, Partnership activities, promotional activities, budget information, and next steps were sent to members of the President's Cabinet monthly. The reports also contained information about completed inside and outside construction activities and projected activities for the next month. Excerpted information from these reports was also provided to the University community on the RUNet 2000 project website.

In addition to the monthly reports described in the previous section, other communication vehicles were used to inform the University community about project activities, as part of an overall project communication plan. These vehicles included the project website, which contains general project information as well as building schedules and weekly construction updates; frequent articles in Rutgers Focus; outreach to campus and local media which resulted in many articles throughout the year (see Public Awareness section for details); meetings with students, faculty, and staff on the three main University campuses; and presentations in such forums as the monthly Treasurer's Luncheon and Board of Governor committee meetings. A special Rutgers Focus insert containing project schedule information was also produced for faculty, staff and students.

III. FY 2001 Goals

A. The Office of Information Technology
Strategic Goals

1. Computing and Information Technology

• Provide University-wide leadership in the integration of information technology resources to support the University's mission of Instruction, Research and Service.
• Facilitate the effective and efficient functioning of policy advisory committees for computing and information technology that will serve as catalysts for implementing policy and standards.
• Identify opportunities to encourage collaboration and cooperation in adapting information technology resources to support instruction, research and service among and within the disparate disciplines offered at the University.
• Facilitate and encourage research capabilities, opportunities and support through involvement and participation in Internet2 and development of RUNet 2000 project enhancements of the Rutgers network.
• Provide advice, counsel and direction in the establishment and development of Rutgers Integrated Administrative System, which will increase efficiency and productivity.

2. Community Service and Support

• Extend Rutgers' resources to K-12 school districts throughout the state through proactive application of information technology.
• Encourage the development of applications across all disciplines that will maximize the use of the high capacity network bandwidth made available through the RUNet 2000 project.

3. Customer Service and Support

• Become a role model within the higher education community for faculty, staff and student satisfaction and service excellence.
• Recruit and retain highly qualified information technology professionals.

4. Connectivity

• Design, build and support a world-class network infrastructure that will support the expanding administrative, instructional, research and service needs of the University.

5. Communication

• Develop and execute communications plans, which inform the Rutgers faculty, staff and students of University Computing Services' mission, functioning and activities.
• Work closely with the Department of University Relations to inform the Rutgers community and local media about Computing Services' activities.

B. University Directorates

1. Administrative Computing Services

Administrative Computing Services Goals for fiscal year 2000/2001

The upgrade of this infrastructure is required to enable the University to handle peak periods beginning in late August 2000 for Registration, Account Creation, Scheduling, etc. A major planning an implementation effort is now underway to add 2 new production Oracle/Unix database servers (Sun E4500's), a new production Oracle/Unix Web Server (Sun E420R), and a new Oracle/Unix development infrastructure (3 - Sun E420R's). Additionally, the versions of the Solaris Operating System, the versions of the Oracle database and the versions of the Oracle Web server will be upgraded to improve support and functionality. The security authentication will also be changed. A OIT cross-divisional team comprised of staff members of ACS, and New Brunswick Computing Services are working together to insure a successful upgrade and implementation.

Complete the development of an architecture and framework for supporting web credit card processing at the University. Consider the Undergraduate Admissions application fee for pilot testing the framework.

This upgrade is required to enhance the network performance for high activity administrative production Web based applications. It will also improve service for the Oracle Financials project currently underway. This effort will upgrade the ACS network infrastructure to 100Mb and full RUNet 2000 compliance. A OIT cross-divisional team comprised of staff members of ACS, and the Telecommunications Division as well as members of Cisco, Bell Atlantic and DCI Consulting services are working together to insure a successful upgrade and implementation.

The acquisition and implementation of automated tape libraries will greatly improve the backup and restore capabilities of the administrative Oracle/Unix and NT production infrastructures. Planning and recommendations are currently underway to acquire and implement this improved technology.

The implementation of a SAN in administrative computing will help improve performance and reliability of our Oracle/Unix and NT infrastructures. We are currently performing an analysis of offerings from several vendors. Our tentative plans are to select the best SAN offering and determine if funding is available to obtain the necessary infrastructure.

Implement the ARTSYS Electronic Transcript capabilities allowing New Jersey Community Colleges to send transcripts electronically and articulate through the ARTSYS database. Develop processes to automatically feed existing student systems to eliminate manual intensive re-keying of transfer course data.

Complete implementation of all Federal financial aid reauthorization requirements.

Initiate planning and analysis for the implementation of all-necessary data conversions and interfaces in support of the IAS project.

Implement ability for partial application processing in the Undergraduate Web Application. Implement administrative (back office) functionality in the Graduate Admissions Web Application. Also implement functionality to process personal statements and references. Provide enhancements to web status page. Provide enhancements to generate "facsimile" of paper application.

Implement co-requisite checking to eliminate the need for departments to register students for co-req. after registration period.

Provide enhancements to SDW to satisfy requirements of clients including selection criteria (multiple semesters), historical data, new data elements and more frequent updating. Rollout Oracle's Web Discoverer query tool to support improved access and delivery of administrative information.

Expand the SRDB to accommodate additional space for data element needs of administrative clients.

Provide students with up-to-date information on financial aid award information via the web.

Implement a web interface for Graduate & Professional School reporting that provides clients with convenient browser access and menu selection of reports.

Improve the ease of access, support, and rollout of the current client server applications by delivering them over the web. Reengineer existing C/S applications to the web including HRInfo, FASIP, First-year Sectioning and Pay-for-Performance.

The upgrade of this infrastructure will improve performance, reliability and security of this critical infrastructure.

IBM has enhanced the functionality of its mainframe operating system in v2.8 considerably. This upgrade will enhance the capability of Web Server implementation on Rutadmin and open up data currently stored on Rutadmin. Additionally, this upgrade will also keep ACS in line with current support levels, which is critical to the reliability of these systems to the University. This upgrade is in process and the implementation target date has been moved out to November 2000 to provide the ACS staff appropriate time to upgrade the entire Oracle/Unix infrastructure currently in place.

This upgrade is required to improve reliability and availability of the University's centrally supported administrative Oracle applications and Web pages on the administrative mainframe. Oracle 8i will also provide new functionality and improve security.

Improve the timeliness and delivery of client reports. Reduce the dependencies on printing by converting online reports to Output Management for viewing and distributed printing. Develop better approaches for rollout; obtain assistance from user departments.

Continue to automate the Time Report Forms and rollout a pilot with selective user departments. Work closely with the Payroll department in the rollout.

Evaluate existing problem and change management processes to ensure adequate controls are in place across all platforms and data center operations. Implement new changes and provide training and documentation for support staff.

Respond to Internal Audit on their review of ACS Disaster Recovery Planning and NT server Audits. Provide the necessary information and respond to recommendation for improvement in a timely manner.

2. Telecommunications Division

Telecommunications Division Goals for fiscal year 2000/2001

TD will be deploying a tremendous quantity of both plant and electronics associated with the RUNet 2000 project. These efforts will be performed in a coordinated, efficient manner with full accountability and inventory control. The management of this large-scale effort poses unique challenges to the division. TD will employ project management best practices in order to complete all tasks in accordance with approved schedules.

The university modems are in need of restructuring. While there has been much effort associated with cleaning up the billing mechanisms, the actual operation of this facility also needs improvement. In order to improve modem availability, long-term limits will be imposed across all modems. In addition, any new modems that are added will be considered express modems with extremely short (15 minute) time outs. These modems will facilitate rapid cycling and are intended primarily for customers to logon quickly and get email.

The TD network database will be completed and will become a central facility in the management of the university network. This major software development effort utilizes a custom designed Oracle database to manage all information associated with the university networks. A public front end will be provided as well as mechanisms for the university community to develop their own front ends. This infrastructure will be utilized to provide both DNS and DHCP services on both the legacy network as well as RUNet 2000.

The Network Management System (NMS) will be completed in the following fiscal year. This coordinated and cohesive set of tools, policies and procedures will improve the overall operation of the university network. This effort is critical to the efficient and predictable delivery of services to our customers. Some components of this system are configuration control, inventory management, and security response.

TD will complete the customer notification policy and system. While network outages are primarily communicated via global mailing lists, TD will put a system into place that will send more tailored messages to appropriate parties in an automated fashion. This will address a common complaint that an outage was planned and they were not aware. While the larger global message may clearly indicate that a maintenance outage may occur, a more personal message should garnish more attention. In addition, a program of follow-up contact will be implemented such that TD can ensure that customer problems have actually been resolved to their satisfaction.

TD will focus attention and energy to improve the integration of effort on the Newark and Camden campuses with the New Brunswick area. While all campuses are treated equally by formal policy, distance makes it more difficult to be responsive organizationally to the needs of Newark and Camden. TD will be evaluating staffing levels and other organizational changes to ascertain how to best accommodate the needs of the remote campuses while still maintaining consistency with respect to New Brunswick.

C. Campus Computing Services

3. Camden Computing Services

Camden Computing Services Goals for fiscal year 2000/2001

1. General University/Campus Support

• Develop and implement plans for Novell, UNIX, NT, 2000 and other operating system improvements.
• Provide leadership to campus departments in developing their Information Technology (IT) needs and plans.
• Provide networking leadership for the campus to improve backbone services, assist in building design, communicate standards and assist in transitional networking plans. Prepare and assist building occupants for a smooth transition to RUNet 2000.
• Promote continued collaboration and cooperation with the Library, Teaching Excellence Center (TEC), and Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) staff in supporting computing components of the planned technology-based classrooms.
• Evaluate the Educational Series for improvements.
• Improve security measures for the community through education, firewalls and virus protection software.

2. Instructional Support

• Provide IT leadership to the campus in the development and implementation of plans for public computing facilities on the campus.
• Encourage and assist faculty in developing web-based instructional materials for classroom presentations.

3. Research Support

• Encourage and support faculty participation in I2-related and other projects requiring information technology. Schedule I2, RUNet 2000 and Information Technology for the 21st Century presentations in Camden to encourage support for grant submissions.
• Participate in the integration and support for departmental outreach programs including distance learning and off campus instruction.

4. Outreach Support

• Gain knowledge of and assist in video distribution for distance learning programs.
• Collaborate with other departments planning for off campus programs.

5. Administrative Support

• Collaborate with administrative departments on campus to improve office workflow and assist in planning for their systems and software upgrades.

6. Operational Goals

• Continue improvement of front line service by implementing the plan to improve student assistants training through seminars, coaching, evaluations and support.
• Maintain communications to faculty, students and staff through paper mailings once per semester, E-mail through the campus REACT, student newspaper and online web announcements.
• Operate and advertise separate Email servers for faculty/staff and students for improved e-mail service to all.
• Continue staff participation on OIT teams to improve the Office of Information Technology and to foster the OIT values.
• Further align services with the campus and institutional needs through participation on the Camden Academic Technology committee, Camden FAS Information Sciences committee, and communications with administrative offices, academic departments, and advisory councils.
• Insure staff professional development to enhance their skills appropriately for their job function and growth.
• Continue the implementation of the customer satisfaction evaluation plan designed last year.
• Implement final changes to the Camden Help Desk process to improve efficiency within the Office of Information Technology while improving response to our community.
• Work more closely and regularly with the campus Unit Computing Specialists to improve the support to all constituents in Camden.
• Continue our communications improvement plan to keep the campus informed and educated about computing at Rutgers and OIT.
• Upgrade the main Unix servers for the campus (crab & clam).
• Investigate the requirements and potential to upgrade the test scoring software and/or equipment (Op Scan).
• Implement second stage of dynamic DHCP for roaming/mobile customers on campus.
• Improve web services to include real audio/video service and investigate a server.

4. New Brunswick Computing Services

New Brunswick Computing Services Goals for fiscal year 2000/2001

General Access Services

• Continue performance improvements in email
• Web-based email
• Establish University LDAP directory. (LDAP is a technology used by Microsoft, Novell, Cisco, Sun, and other companies for their next generation of services.)
• Certificate-based authentication, testing phase
• University-wide calendaring system
• Continue progress in web access for major services. Goals for this year are web-based password change and quota management
• Better integration between instructional services such as WebCT and mailing lists and administrative data - faculty shouldn't have to add students by hand
• Evaluate Blackboard (the major competitor to WebCT)

Departmental Services

• Expand activities of UNIX support group in departments
• Recommend a firewall product
• Scan University systems for major security problems
• Move security incident handling to Remedy database
• Produce first version of recommended security policies and procedures
• Initial release of software for Solaris and Linux in RPM format
• Automatic software delivery for major PC software
• Plan for support of Microsoft Active Directory, with initial implementation of necessary central infrastructure
• Approach for preventing future attacks like "I Love You"
• RUNet 2000: provide leadership and staffing for RUNet 2000, particularly in the areas of the departmental transition plan and PC support services
• Necessary central infrastructure to support Novell transition.

User Services

• Reorganize NB web pages
• Work with HR and the Teaching Excellence Center (TEC) to do training of departmental staff in email and web-related areas.
• Continued support for training facility
• Help desk initiative: combination of help desk software and improvements in training and monitoring
• Regular emailed newsletter to all users
• Participation in training and support for RIAS

5. Newark Computing Services

Newark Computing Services Goals for fiscal year 2000/2001

Computing and Information Technology

• Provide campus-wide leadership in the integration of information technology resources to support the missions and activities of the campus.
• Provide leadership, advice and direction to the campus computing committees.
• Provide campus leadership in the development and continuous change of the public computing facilities to meet the needs of the campus.
• Encourage and support faculty research through participation in Internet 2 and implementation of RUNet 2000.
• Promote departmental support through a campus computing support model developed collaboratively with campus representatives.
• Promote and expand the collaboration and cooperation between Computing Services, the Teaching Excellence Center (TEC), and the library.2

1. Community Service and Support

• Facilitate campus outreach programs through departmental consulting and support.

2. Customer Service and Support

• Make appropriate operational changes based upon analysis of customer satisfaction survey to Improve customer satisfaction with services provided.
• Improve operation and staffing of the student labs through continued development of appropriate policies, improved hiring, training and supervision of lab assistants, and improved reporting and repair of hardware and software.
• Improve operation of CS-Net group through implementation of trouble reporting and tracking application.

3. Connectivity

• Support the implementation of RUNet 2000 through leadership and participation in campus planning and preparation.
• Provide leadership and support to campus departments transitioning to RUNet 2000.

4. Communication

• Continue full implementation of the communications plan and assess its functionality to inform campus faculty, staff, and students of the mission, function and responsibilities of the division.

D. RUNet 2000

RUNet 2000 Goals for fiscal year 2000/2001

• Deploy the Rutgers Television Network on Busch and Livingston Campuses
• Complete internal wiring on Newark Campus
• Complete conduit construction on Newark, Camden, Cook/Douglass, and College Avenue Campuses
• Integrate planning and implementation processes with major university initiatives such as the Higher Education Capital Improvement Program, Rutgers Integrated Administrative System, and the state mandated fire safety sprinkler retrofit program
• Plan and begin implementation of a Rutgers Regional Network (RRN)
• Develop a recommendation to the Board of Governors concerning anticipated work to be done upon completion of Phase I