ISC09D027 Report on ISD Programme of Work Project reports Development of ISD space Library Our designers are currently working on the final plans for floor 0 and preparatory work has begun on the back of house spaces. At the same time, the implications for existing working practices and procedures are being reviewed.
The main part of the work will be scheduled between the end of June and the end of August 2010 with alternative
arrangements for access to the building and its services over the Summer.
A project web site is available at: www.uea.ac.uk/is/lib/floor0refurb which includes a floor plan and details of the interregnum.
Research Support Note the ISD Research Board met on 14th April, the minutes from the meeting will be submitted to the June ISSC.
Strand 1 ‐ Research Support service Proposed service level definitions for the Research Computing Service have been approved by the Research Board. A service level definition that describes how the service might grow in future was also considered. Strand 2 ‐ E‐science We arranged with NeSC to run an e‐research roadshow at UEA on 21 April 2010. However, due to unforeseen circumstances this event was cancelled. We are intending to run a similar local event before the end of the calendar year.
Planning is progressing for the enhancement of the HPC cluster. This work is intended to increase its capacity. While this is
expected to be completed within the current financial year, further work in this area will be undertaken by the newly
appointed HoRC. A review of the HPC cluster has been considered by Research Board. Strand 3 ‐ Storage Nothing further to report. Strand 4 ‐ Publications database, Repository and REF The review stage of the Digital Repository/Publications database has been completed. UEA will be implementing e:prints on a server hosted at UEA. The next steps will include the ingest of existing data from the current Digitool system as well as a
number of faculty based databases where possible.
To underpin the new repository, a consultation process is underway with Faculty Executives proposing that UEA adopts an
open access policy for the deposit of research papers. This proposal has also been considered by the Research Board. Strand 5 – Business systems and PMA Nothing further to report. Strand 6 ‐ Research web sites A report on the use of the web by researchers and research groups was considered by the Research Board. Teaching and Learning support The new post is ISD project manager has been appointed, once in post this person will lead coordination of the programme of work to support this strand of activity. SITS The SIS Project continues to make good progress against the programme of work, with the following to note: • The first stage of the Timetabling project has gone live, allowing staff to setup teaching patterns. The next phases of timetabling to be released will be student scheduling and the room bookings component. • The Advance Registration pilot has taken place, and a steer is expected from the SIS Project Board in June on whether this process should continue for September.
• SITS was upgraded to 8.3.1 in March and it was agreed that the conversion to Unicode would also take place at this
time, in preparation for UCAS transmitting additional character sets. Checks have been put in place to ensure that only appropriate characters are transferred to other systems.
• A task has been created to allow Students to nominate a referee – this will have a phased rollout and is currently
available to all finalists completing before 31st December 2010, and will be made available to all other students from September. • To be able to provide e:Vision content to UEA London staff a number of the student and module look up screens have been rewritten although the layout and functionality has not changed. • Finally, a task to assist the engagement monitoring for Tier 4 students has been created for administrative staff, which allows staff to swipe a student card to locate the student record, rather than type the Student Code. The first test of this was the April checks and these were carried out successfully. Additional work will be required on this strand for enhancements and extra data requirements. Reclassification The re‐labelling and re‐shelving element of the Reclassification project is now almost complete. The bulk of the work on Floors 01, 1, 2 and 3 are finished. The final floor, Floor 02 will be completed by the end of May. It is anticipated that quality checking will continue for a few weeks beyond that date. Monitoring of Help Desk statistics relating to reclassification has taken place on a weekly basis and has demonstrated relatively low impact on users. The Nursing and Midwifery Library in King’s Lynn will
be reclassified from Monday 14th June and it is anticipated that the work will take approximately 6 days. We have liaised with NAM and with library colleagues at King’s Lynn to ensure that this work will have little impact on users.
Although the most prominent part of the work is almost complete, there will be a number of ongoing tasks from August 2010
onwards. This will primarily focus on the cleanup of data. We hope to address the priority data in 2010/11 academic year
although the final clean‐up of name and subject headings may take considerably longer.
Telephony The roll out of handsets has started and was on schedule up until Easter, with the Arts buildings close to completion. Since
then a number of technical issues have occurred, including hardware failure of a server managed by Siemens. This meant that the roll out has had to be put on hold. The issues were escalated up to director level within Siemens and we are having daily conference calls to get the issues resolved. It is hoped that the system will be ready so that we can re‐start the roll out during the week commencing 17 May. Once the urgent technical issues are resolved there are a number of outstanding contractual issues that will be dealt with, with assistance from UEA Purchasing. The project team will meet on 19 May to agree the detailed roll out schedule for the next academic year and how to deal with the delay caused by the technical issues.
Sustainability Officially finished on 31/3/10, but some work remains to close the project. A final report has been submitted to JISC and is
available along with the majority of the output reports on the project website. Some output reports are undergoing final
revisions before being uploaded to the project website. A copy of the final report has also been circulated to UEA’s
Sustainability Group.a. The project website is at http://www.uea.ac.uk/is/sustainable‐ict Service Continuity Work to collate service checklist has been temporarily suspended pending work on a new project to implement ITIL which will, as an early deliverable, be reworking the ISD service catalogue. Customer relationship management Nothing further to add. Information Framework Given the high levels of work that continue to be associated with Freedom of Information requests there has been no activity in this area. Managed Print Services Pilot
Ricoh emerged as the preferred bidder from the tender process quoting Bournemouth, Gloucestershire and Warwick
Universities as reference sites. The project team are planning to visit Bournemouth because they have a similar infrastructure
and roll out to that which UEA proposes. An audit of printing usage has been undertaken in pilot areas from end March to
early May as part of the detailed survey to inform the planning of the pilot roll out. This will identify equipment to be replaced,
record current usage and estimate potential savings. There have been some delays caused by changes in personnel at Ricoh
and as a result their completion of the physical audit and its recommendations are still awaited, together with their plan for
moving forward without further delay.
procurement will go out to IRDA suppliers by the end of May. In the original contract we only tendered for PCs, however this time suppliers are asked to provide information and costs for laptops, All‐in‐one units and thin clients.
Due to the problems and issues surrounding the suppliers administration of the current contract we have been far more
stringent in our requirements this time. Suppliers are being asked to provide a negotiated operations manual to give detailed information on how every part of the contract and every process in terms of ordering, delivery and disposal will be managed. Where the suppliers fall short of this agreement in the future we will be able to impose penalties outlined in the Inter regional desktop agreement.
The next stage will be to shortlist tender submissions from suppliers and start the process of kit evaluation, meetings and presentations. The aim is to have a new contract in place by the beginning of the new financial year 2010/2011. Review of the conditions of computer use A major review of the Conditions of Computer Use was started in May. The review team which consists of representatives from ISD, HRD and DOS has met and agreed on the main areas of focus and guiding principles for the review. Staff union, Students Union and GSA reps have been briefed on the review and their comment invited. A discussion paper has been submitted to the
IT and Computing Forum for discussion and comment at their meeting in May. It is planned to have a proposed new CoCU
ready for discussion/agreement at the ISSC June meeting and then for subsequent review by UEA auditors in July.
Main areas of focus in the review are:
• Disclosure of passwords, particularly in relation to phishing attacks and their resulting in UEA being blacklisted on a
regular basis by external ISPs
• Code of conduct for IT support staff and related
• Email etiquette , liability disclaimers and confidentiality statements
• Copyright infringements in light of recent increase in such from student residences
• Pornography – reviewing our approach in regard to non‐illegal pornographic material. The position and response for
illegal material is quite clear. The potential outsourcing of the student email service will also have to be taken into account. Review ISD contingency planning A review of the high level contingency plans for ISD is underway. UEA London This project is complete.
Review and planning reports Review of Student ICT provision Microsoft and Google have been invited to tender for the provision of student ICT services. The tender’s are currently with the suppliers and are due to be returned shortly. Both suppliers have given presentations on their services to staff and students representing a cross‐section of the University. Their feedback and scoring of these services has been recorded. The scores will form part of the tender assessment. Development of AV strategy This is now complete and the new strategy is being submitted to ISSC as a separate paper. Review of digital communications
Recommendations for changes to the way info@ is used have been developed by MAC and will be considered at the
forthcoming Web Strategy Group. The next stage of work is a review of mailing lists and their ownership, membership and use Review of Content Management Systems This work has been deferred to 2010/11 Library acquisitions budget value for money exercise Work is now focusing on negotiations for next year’s renewals with major publishers. Service costs – ICT provision This work has been deferred to 2010/11 Review of Faculty and Divisional requirements for Finance systems The project documentation has been circulated to Faculties and the Finance Division for comment, it is expected that this work will start over the summer. TV Studio The TV studio and equipment therein is scheduled for replacement in academic year 2010/11. This review will lay the ground
work for that replacement project. The TV studio is core to teaching in some Humanities Schools but could be more widely
used and so the review will identify such opportunities. Project initiation is scheduled for June 2010. Service plans The ISD Strategy 2008‐13 identifies eleven keys areas or groupings for ISD service delivery; the table below summarises activity in each of these areas. Library resource provision, including management of the physical and electronic collections and information skills Following UEA’s Learning & Teaching Committee endorsement of ISD’s proposal that the Library copy of each UEA PhD thesis can optionally be deposited in electronic format in place of the bound print version, Andrew Barker has been liaising with the PGR Policy Group to work out the detail. This new approach to the deposit of e‐theses went live on 1st April and several have already been received. From April 2010, all journal articles requested through the Inter Library Loan service will be emailed directly to the requester
training. as a pdf document, thereby providing a speedier and more convenient service, especially for academics and researchers working off‐site.
The digitisation project has continued throughout this academic year with networked storage space being used to store
digitised items. Faculty Librarians continue to liaise with schools to identify courses as candidates for further digitisation. Since
the project began over 100 articles and chapters have been digitised. We have received a significant amount of positive
feedback from schools on this initiative.
Jane Helgesen, our Information Skills Librarian, is planning the implementation of our new information skills strategy and
programme which will launch in September. As part of this implementation process Jane presented at UEA’s Teaching and
Learning day in April. Jane has also launched a UEA Library blog to allow a more structured promotion of our resources and services.
This work is in line with our emphasis on leveraging the best value out of our existing resources.
Having taken receipt of the papers of the late environmentalist Roger Deakin last summer, we launched the Roger Deakin
archive on May 7th with an event at the Sainsbury Centre. This archive is a significant deposit and has received national attention. IT infrastructure in teaching spaces, including IT teaching areas, 24 hours IT area, self study spaces and AV services in lecture rooms. Student network printing The WebPrint service part of the Student Network Printing service has been delayed. This is due to the longer than expected time to create user documentation. PC desktops The following software has been deployed to both the Staff and Student IT Area desktop: ‐ 7Zip File Archive Manager. This replaced ZipCentral. ‐ Adobe Reader was upgraded to v9 ‐ The British Library’s secure electronic resource delivery software FileOpen . ‐ QuickTime was upgraded to v7.4.5.67 The following software has been deployed to the ITCS managed IT Areas: ‐ Pymol, a molecular visualization system. ‐ Stata data analysis and statistical software was upgrade to v11. ‐ TexMaker and TexLive replaces TecNicCentre and Miktex as the Latex support application.
The latest version of ECDL and the new numerical modeling application Stella are ready for deployment once the staff responsible for testing have completed that process The latest version of McAfee Virusscan is delayed due to technical issues with its deployment. It is hoped that the issues will be resolved shortly. A schedule of planned software deployments is now published at https://intranet.uea.ac.uk/is/infoitsupportstaff and updated on a monthly basis. Office 2007 Despite the creation of full documentation for IT staff on the rollout of Office 2007, highlighting the expected rollout issues a
significant amount of time has been spent assisting faculty IT staff with the process. The known issues are that the
configuration of all PC’s needs to be check to ensure it is correct, users communications are essential and previous rollout
methods can cause problems. It is expected that all UEA desktops will be running Office 2007 by 1st September 2010. Windows 7 Initiation of the Windows 7 project has been completed however work is expected to be slow until a project manager is place. Staff and student enquiry services, including IT helpdesks, Library helpdesk, reception services, Library training. We have now successfully completed our consultation with staff and unions on our proposals for changes to front‐line staffing
to ensure we can provide a consistent level of service across all our opening hours. As a result, from September 2010 the
Library and Reception teams will be merged. We are currently working with staff from this team to review many of our front‐
line business processes with the aim of finding ways of working that better meet the needs of users and the new working
environment that these staff will have following the summer refurbishment of Floor 0 of the Library.
We have detailed plans in place to ensure continuity of service provision during the building works and have consulted with
key groups of users, such as MED and the Graduate Student Association who will be most affected by the changes, to ensure we are responsive to their needs over this period.
The IT Helpdesk team will be introducing new call‐logging software this month. This software will be rolled out to other ISD
teams during the summer and we hope to be able to offer self‐logging of IT problems for end users during the 2010‐11
academic year. IT infrastructure, including two computer suites providing In response to the CRU hacking incident, we have been working with both CRU and ENV IT Support to replace the existing CRU IT Infrastructure. This work is expected to be completed by the end of May. Work to migrate client systems to Active Directory has progressed well and as such authentication is now using secure central authentication. Further centrally provided storage
resilient email, filestore, backup and
authentication services.
has also been provided to assist with the migration and decommissioning of local storage systems. Researchers central file
store quotas have been increased to 10GB and this is now the default quota for these users. All staff will be migrated to Outlook/Exchange and where necessary short term quotas will be increase to accommodate user requirements. Longer term the implementation of an email archiving solution will provide greater flexibility.
A review of the access list for the Computer Suites has been completed by external auditors. This highlighted the need to further restrict the access to these areas. Following agreements with the managers in Maintenance and Security the access list have been significantly reduced. Decommissioning of central systems last Solaris based file server (Fileserver4) is due for completion in mid‐June. This currently provides SAMBA file services to departmental web pages that cannot be supported via the CMS system. We are working with those users to provide alternative means for accessing and updating this content. A legacy service, running on this server, that
provided updates to a previous version of Alumni – email forwarding for life, is also in the process of being migrated to the
new Alumni system. The Alumni department and CIS are assisting with this.
Implementation of the elective storage archiving solution has been delayed due to complex storage requirements for Security logging and the EAFA digitisation project. We fully intend on providing an archive area for users via a link in Central File Store although this will be limited to Windows users. It is understood that this does not provide all the functionality required however it will allow us to provide some form of archiving and review the utilisation.
Our storage group have identified limitations of the current SAN infrastructure and together with IBM and Brocade have put
forward a proposal for upgrading the system. Additionally they have also been looking into options to reduce data restore
times.
Development and deployment of the UEA London IT infrastructure was completed on schedule. City University's directory
services integration is still being progressed by City’s IT team and it is likely they will request further support from us. This outstanding work does not affect the ability of UEA London to provide service to UEA and UEA‐INTO students. An issue is also outstanding with the storage infrastructure which we are progressing.
During development of the London infrastructure, an issue was identified with Windows Server 2008 SP2 and RADIUS
(EduRoam etc) authentication. A Microsoft hot fix for the issue has since been applied and other mitigation has been put in
place to ensure any impact of this type is lessened in future. With this completed the Server 2003 domain controllers have now been decommissioned.
Network and Telephony, management of the internal network, external network links, and telephony.
The new VPN equipment has been delivered and is in the process of being configured and installed. We continue to see a
positive response to the pilot VPN service.
Wireless installations have been completed and activated in Sportspark and Blackdale with the physical installation completed
in ZICER, SCVA Crescent Wing, Estates and the University Health Service Launderette. These latter installations will become
active as the Power‐over‐Ethernet switches are installed. This work will complete our internal wireless coverage program.
Power‐over‐Ethernet switches have been rolled out into the ARTS building and Edith Cavell (Nursing and Midwifery) as part of the join up with the VoIP (Voice‐over‐IP) computerised phone roll out.
JANet (Joint Academic Network) have notified us that they are changing the provision of the university’s Internet access.
Currently the university acts as a point‐of‐presence (PoP) for regional connections to local colleges and enjoys a 1Gb
connection to the JANet router located on‐site. The JANet router itself has two resilient 1Gb connections: one to Anglian Ruskin University in Colchester and one to Cambridge University. Under the new scheme the JANet router will be housed in commercial premises in Norwich, have an upgraded link of 10Gb to equivalent premises in Peterborough and Ipswich as part
of the new Eastern Regional Network, and will provide the university with a 2Gb connection. Discussions are still on‐going
regarding the provision of a secondary Internet connection and the linkage speed. In part this may depend on the network
requirements of the Student ICT project.
The digitisation project being undertaken at the East Anglian Film Archive has instigated an upgrade from 100Mbit to 1Gb
between this remote Norwich site and the main campus. Research computing, provision and support for a 160 node cluster used for high powered computing.
A new High Performance Computing systems developer post was advertised in March/April, with interviews taking place on
May 10th. There was a good response with a good mix of candidates with HPC experience and technical expertise. An offer
was made to the successful candidate, who accepted the position and is expected to join the Research Computing team in
June/July. The tender document for a new HPC cluster was completed in early May, and is expected to be released through the National Server and Storage Agreement in the third week of May. We are expecting six responses, either directly or through a reseller from Dell, HP, IBM, NEC, Sun and Viglen. The schedule for the tender is expected to be as follows: • Invitation to tender – 17th May • Supplier Q & A session – 24th May
• Submission of tenders – 7th June • Tender evaluation and short listing – 7th‐11th June • Supplier presentations and final evaluation – 14th‐18th June • Contract clarification and solution development –21st‐25th June • Contract signed – 2nd July 2010
It is anticipated the new cluster will be available to selected users for limited testing from the 4th quarter of 2010. Alongside
the tender process for a new cluster there will be investment in new storage dedicated to the HPC cluster to meet the increasing demands.
Further work has been carried out on migrating ESCluster to UEA authentication through QAS/VAS. After some initial issues with cluster stability which appeared to be indirectly influenced by QAS/VAS, the major problems now appear to be resolved. Final live testing is being carried out with a select group of users. It is anticipated that all externally accessible systems will be
using UEA authentication through QAS/VAS by the end of May. Internal cluster communication will be supported through
QAS/VAS but actually uses SSH keys.
A new UEA visitor account type has been created targeted at academic High Performance Computing cluster collaborators.
The Research Computing collaborator account has very limited access, but allows external users collaborating on projects with UEA academics to access the HPC cluster facility. Usage on the cluster remained high through the first quarter of 2010, with demand for both parallel and sequential processing slots exceeding the number available for significant periods. Storage demand on the cluster also remains high, with additional disk space being allocated on the dedicated scratch storage array from one of a small number of reserve virtual disks. Usage on the scratch storage array is likely to near capacity by the time the new cluster is made available. Teaching systems including the VLE, Portal, Library Management System, and some specialist teaching software. The VLE and Portal have been stable over the period with only ongoing maintenance work being carried out. Changes to the
VLE have been applied to enable the use of the VLE for pre‐ course start discussions in support of the Booker Prize Project.
This work is still dependant on a final decision on Advanced Registration. Changes have been made to the Advanced Registration and Photo Upload processes to address concerns from the pilot. Work has begun on a JISC funded project to develop Library Widgets to enable library resources to be accessed from mobile devices and social networking sites.
An upgrade and migration of service to new hardware has been performed on the Metalib service –we now have dedicated
test infrastructure. We will be moving to an upgraded version of Primo in mid July and to SFX 4.0 immediately after that.
Primo version 3 should provide additional functionality and stability to the service. Administrative and web systems, including Finance, Student Records, HR, Estates and the UEA web site. Work to deliver electronic payslips to staff has been started.
A long standing issue with the Finance system which was preventing upgrades being applied has been resolved and we are
now in the process of testing the latest upgrade. Audio visual services, including video conferencing, TV studio, off air recording and access grid. All of the service areas have been involved in the development of the AV strategy (reported above). Plans are progressing well to roll out the preferred video and audio streaming solution into service. In terms of lecture capture, specifications for the hardware requirement are currently being confirmed with the manufacturer, supplier and ISD teams to put the server infrastructure in place. This Mediasite Lecture Capture solution will be available in the Thomas Paine Study Centre lecture theatre, DEV, NBS and LAW. Print group services. See ‘Managed Print Services’ report (above). Security, policy and compliance.
Considerable effort is still being put into management of Freedom of Information requests and responding to a number of
reviews being undertaken by the Information Commissioners Office.