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Web Development – the Next Steps
Significant progress has been made on the redesign of the Western Washington University home page. The ATUS Web Services team has worked hard in collaboration with the University Communications team and individuals from the Library, Admissions, as well as faculty from our Design Program and student interns to produce the current designs. As we have seen through the information architecture and design portions of the project, the result has been a truly dramatic overhaul of our website that will be outward facing and marketing oriented. Even as we begin the final implementation, we need to turn our attention to next steps to continue to maintain and enhance our presence on the web and our ability to communicate effectively to our constituents both internally and externally. We have developed the appropriate synergy between Web Services and University Communications as we move forward into working relationship with University Communications. Moving forward, University Communications will provide the content and some design development for our home page and Web Services will provide the technical and content management for the vast amount of information available through our website. We fully expect the collaboration between these groups and others to continue. Even with this collaboration and synergy, there is still more work than can be accomplished by these groups and there are new initiatives that must be undertaken both for regulatory needs and to keep our web presence fresh and useful to prospective students and other internal and external constituents. ATUS received 0.5 base funding and 0.5 one‐time funding for Blackboard Web Systems Analyst in 2011‐12. This position is critical to the operation of our Learning Management System. This request is for permanent funding. ATUS received on‐time funding for a 1.0 FTE Web Systems Developer with a departmental focus for the 2010‐12 period. This request is for permanent funding. To meet future goals for web presence and mobile applications we propose consideration of adding personnel to this team in the following areas (in priority order): Web Systems Analyst with a focus on Blackboard support, an additional 0.5 FTE
This position currently exists but is only funded 0.5 FTE ‘base’ and needs the additional funding to bring to 1.0 FTE. Last year 3,558 courses used Blackboard for some portion of the Learning Management Suite with over 90,000 student enrollments in those courses. With this level of use and the expected expansion of off campus courses via Extended Education, this position must be full time. When there are ebbs in the workload, the position does assist the web team just as they assist with Blackboard support at peak times. Without this position the webmaster would need to take on responsibilities that would distract from our home page efforts. Web Systems Developer with a focus on department websites and ADA
accessibility 1.0 FTE
Federal law requires that entities receiving federal funding must have ADA Compliant websites as part of providing equal access to programs, services and activities. Recently the National Federation of the Blind has been actively assisting students in bringing lawsuits against universities for failure to provide accessibility to web based information and applications. While WWU has made progress towards compliance, our departments need significant assistance in bringing their websites both up to the standard of our new design and to the appropriate standard for ADA compliance. This position could assist in both areas.Page | 2 Short‐term deliverables: o Develop and disseminate a new ‘simple’ university template to departments currently on the old university template o Evaluate and assure ADA compliance of new home page and initial Drupal sites o Select departmental “early adopters” for transition to a Drupal template, develop and deliver training for use of Drupal templates o Evaluate ADA issues in non‐compliant (non‐university template sites) areas and transition to Drupal or static templates for ADA compliance Long‐term deliverables: o Continued assistance to departments in developing and production of their websites. o Continued evaluation and refinement of ADA compliance over the entire WWU site. o Assistance as needed in continual ‘refreshing’ of WWU website.
Web Systems Analyst with a focus on mobile web and mobile ‘apps’. 1.0 FTE
Mobile technology continues to evolve at an ever increasing rate, and the adoption rate of smartphone and tablets is quite high in our target audience of young adults. While the revision of our website was needed, we cannot expect a content rich website to be the experience we want to provide on a mobile device. We need to work on mobile applications that both provide information and allow students to “do”. Mobile apps should not be a static representation of a website but rather a place where a student can register for classes, download a podcast of a lecture, view their grades, etc. This position would focus on development of apps for the two most common mobile operating systems and help our team build a robust mobile website accessible by any mobile device with a web browser. Short‐term deliverables: o Assure roll‐out of mobile “Learn” module for the Blackboard learning management o Evaluate and develop candidate applications for mobile web development vs. true mobile apps o Gather data to support a selection of 3‐5 most needed and urgent mobile applications (registration, payment, application, etc) and evaluate current vendor offerings vs. development o Implement or develop selected apps Long‐term deliverables: o Continued development of mobile web sites for university and departmental sites. o Continued development of web applications. o Continued refinement and development of mobile ‘apps’. With the addition of these critical positions, we believe that we can continue the trajectory established by the Web Redesign project. We will be able to provide needed help to departments with their web sites, compliance with federal law, and expansion of our use of the web for mobile technology; all at the level demanded by our constituents and to validate our character traits, support the reasons to believe, and to demonstrate that Western is a leader in active learning, critical thinking and societal problem solving.2013-14 2014-15 2013-15 RESOURCES
Fund 001, General Fund - State $0 $155,000 $250,000 Fund 149, Tuition Operating Fees $0 $0 $0 Fund XX, Other Sources $0 $0 $0
Total Resources $0 $155,000 $250,000
USES (EXPENDITURES)
Faculty Tenure/Tenure-Track $0 $0 $0
Faculty Non Tenure-Track $0 $0 $0
Graduate Teaching/Research Assistants $0 $0 $0
Exempt Professional $0 $0 $0
Classified $95,000 $155,000 $250,000
Salaries and Wages - Total $95,000 $155,000 $250,000
Employee Benefits $0 $0 $0
Goods and Services -$95,000 $0 $0
Equipment $0 $0 $0
Total Expenditures $0 $155,000 $250,000
STAFFING FTE
Faculty 0.00 0.00
Graduate Teaching /Research Assistants 0.00 0.00 Exempt Professional 0.00 0.00
Classified 1.50 2.50
Total FTE 1.50 2.50
Planning Unit:Academic Affairs Planning Unit Priority:
2013-15 Biennial Operating Budget Request (Part A) Initiative Title: Web Development Next Steps
Information Security Officer 2013‐14
The Security Audit performed by LBL Technologies had a significant number of recommendations with a "high" priority level. Many of these have been completed and work is in progress to remediate remaining issues. For example: Our Network Infrastructure Project allowed us to purchase new Intrusion Detection /Protection Systems (IDS/IPS) that are appropriately sized for our bandwidth. The project also reinforced our Firewall capacity. We received minor capital project funding in to address infrastructure improvements to our data center. These changes provide the extra remediation recommended in the report such as additional water detectors, better power and cooling capacity and earthquake resistant racks. We have requested capital funding in for upgrading our wireless network which will address the concerns raised about wireless security. However we will also take remedial action with the current wireless infrastructure. A recommendation not addressed due to the decline in state resources and the pro‐active realignment of staff duties was the need for and Information Security officer. Recent events have reinforced the need to have a dedicated person to information security.Information Security Officer
$110,000.00 plus benefits on‐going funding for an Information Security Officer in ITS. o A person in this role will be able to help us address many of the items in the audit related to policy development, training and review in each category of the audit. $5,000.00 on‐going for security training and certification needs. $80,000.00 one‐time and $15,000 on‐going for data security and metric devices. o The recommendation for developing metrics would be greatly assisted with software and hardware tools. The Security Officer position would address these audit topics:Data Integrity & Security
The recommendations in this area would be overseen by the Information Security Officer. Recommendation for email consolidation would need both oversight and the potential centralization of service. This project is proposed in the request “Western Move to the Cloud”.Infrastructure
Testing equipment for this area is included in the Governance section above.Authentication, Authorization, and Identity Management
Recommendations in this area include centralized authentication, authorization and identity management.Social Engineering
Recommendations in this area can be part of the Information Security Officer's responsibility in conjunction with Human Resources training programs.2013-14 2014-15 2013-15 RESOURCES
Fund 001, General Fund - State $110,000 $130,000 $340,000 Fund 149, Tuition Operating Fees $0 $0 $0 Fund XX, Other Sources $0 $0 $0
Total Resources $110,000 $130,000 $340,000
USES (EXPENDITURES)
Faculty Tenure/Tenure-Track $0 $0 $0
Faculty Non Tenure-Track $0 $0 $0
Graduate Teaching/Research Assistants $0 $0 $0
Exempt Professional $110,000 $110,000 $220,000
Classified $0 $0 $0
Salaries and Wages - Total $110,000 $110,000 $220,000
Employee Benefits $0 $0 $0
Goods and Services $0 $20,000 $120,000
Equipment $0 $0 $0
Total Expenditures $110,000 $130,000 $340,000
STAFFING FTE
Faculty 0.00 0.00
Graduate Teaching /Research Assistants 0.00 0.00 Exempt Professional 1.00 1.00
Classified 0.00 0.00
Total FTE 1.00 1.00
Planning Unit:Academic Affairs Planning Unit Priority:
2013-15 Biennial Operating Budget Request (Part A) Initiative Title: Information Security Officer
