Information Technology Strategic Plan 2010-2015 A Final Report 30 June 2015 (version 1.0)
Introduction This document is a brief report on key tasks performed by the Central IT over the past 5 years to satisfy the 6 strategic goals outlined in the Information Technology Strategic Plan 2010 – 2015, which was formulated to align ICT activities to the University Strategic Plan 2010 – 2015 as well as the Discovery-enriched Curriculum (DEC). The Central IT consists of the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), the Computing Services Centre (CSC) and the Enterprise Solutions Office (ESU). The OCIO is responsible for the strategic development and co-ordination of all information services and technology in the University, and is headed by the Chief Information Officer (CIO) who reports to the Vice-President (Administration) (VP(AD)). Under the supervision of the CIO are the CSC and ESU. CSC is responsible for the provision and management of central ICT and information systems facilities at the main campus, remote campuses, and remote offices; and for rendering technical support for those services and systems. ESU is primarily responsible for the development and maintenance of enterprise administrative systems, and the management of enterprise data. The 6 strategic IT goals are: • Goal #1: Enable Transformational Change • Goal #2: Provide Robust and Agile IT Infrastructure • Goal #3: Be Efficient and Cost Effective • Goal #4: Ensure IT Security • Goal #5: Enhance Transparency and Organizational Effectiveness • Goal #6: Promote Policies, Governance and Standards The following highlights key tasks performed over the past 5-year period of the IT Strategic Plan to satisfy each of those goals.
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Goal #1: Enable Transformational Change “We believe IT should be leveraged as a tool that will enable transformational change for the University in achieving its new strategies and directions.” The IT-enabled transformational change with the biggest impact over the past five years is clearly the 334 education reform. CityU’s unique 334 curriculum provides personalized student-centric learning experience with freedom in selecting study paths via first-year experience and majors/minors, as well as exposure to 21st century skill sets through Gateway Education courses. For this transformation to happen, IT is crucial to manage and streamline processes. Numerous new systems and modifications to our existing Banner ERP were made. For example, we created a new admissions system to cater to the new DSE admissions and our new college/school admissions model; a new interview scheduling system and related mobile app to support the University’s goal of interviewing all applicants; a new academic advisor and student mentor system to assign an advisor and mentor to each freshman to guide them through the first-year experience; a new major/minor selection system to match student interest with major/minor departments; revamped student information system to cater to the new flexible curriculum structure as well as new access control mechanisms to allow cross-disciplinary studies; a new degree audit system to support academic advising; and a new classroom scheduling model to ensure that classes are scheduled in such a way to allow students to take advantage of courses offered by a broad range of disciplines. We also migrated our Banner ERP to high performance Oracle Exadata to give students more flexibility and speed in course registration. Our 334 IT implementation was performed in-house with existing staff, representing major cost savings for the University. This effort was recognized by the CIO Magazine (USA) as one of the top global IT projects, and the University received a “2013 CIO 100 Award.” Another big area of IT-enabled transformational change has been facilitating teaching/learning needs of the Discovery-Enhanced Curriculum (DEC). DEC is the next-generation professional education curriculum with strong emphasis on technology, discovery, and innovation. IT is crucial in facilitating the discovery process and DEC teaching pedagogies. Numerous new e-learning tools were deployed to facilitate collaboration, sharing and teamwork required for modern discovery. In addition, we offered several rounds of technology grants to encourage technology adoption the “DEC Technology Adoption Grants for Teaching Innovation” (TAGs) and the “DEC Mobile App Development Grants” (MADGs). TAGs support the purchase of necessary mobile devices, software and apps needed to implement innovative teaching methods whereas MADGs encourage the adoption of mobile-learning through the development of mobile apps that support teaching, learning, research, administration and other general uses. Our work in providing a rich e-learning environment is also a major area of IT-enabled transformational change. We provided a spectrum of technologies to enable faculty members to teach using a variety of pedagogical approaches that best suit the individual needs of a particular discipline/course. For example, since 2012, we actively promoted “flipped classroom” pedagogy, offering over 30 sessions of seminars and workshops to our faculty colleagues during 2012. A 2014 survey indicated that 73% of student participants have attended flipped classes while around 50% of this group felt classes were more engaging and learning was enhanced. In addition, three “DEC
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Labs” were commissioned to support “flipped classroom” teaching of computing courses. The CS Department used those facilities in its teaching of college/school core computing courses to over a thousand CSE and SCM students annually. Technologies we have put into place to support “flipped classroom” included expanding our lecture capturing capabilities as well as tools and venues to facilitate in-class teamwork/collaboration. We also installed video booths in our Library to allow convenient high quality video capturing for students. In addition, the Personal Capture software is available to all staff for anytime anywhere video capturing. Mobile-learning is another transformational change enabler. Our mobile-learning really started with our upgrading of our entire campus wireless network to support IEEE 802.11n in 2009/2010 and provided full campus coverage. In addition, the University has access to over ten thousand hotspots around Hong Kong, allowing students to communicate, share, and collaborate conveniently anywhere. In 2011, the University launched its mobile-learning initiative through the deployment of mobile apps for our learning management system (LMS). Over the past couple of years, we worked with various departments and colleagues to encourage the use of mobile devices. Today, roughly 75% of all our students regularly use mobile app access to our LMS. Last year over 95,000 individual mobile devices logged into our wireless LAN. Another major enabler is the Paperless Office Service, which provided the University with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) capabilities. Through this new service, administrative units, such as the HRO, the FO, the Council Secretariat, and others, benefit from using highly-secured digitized archives for sensitive or personal records. Since the launch of this service in September 2012, over 275,000 documents representing millions of pages are now archived into the EMC Documentum platform. With easy online search and document access, users benefit from improved productivity gains. Our Enterprise Document Management Team (EDMT) has been further leveraging this platform to provide e-business workflow, such as the e-Duty Visit System launched late 2014. Because our Paperless Office Service is a mission critical system managing highly confidential documents, the Central IT adopted international security and service management best practices. Since 2013, the Paperless Office Service received ISO 27001 certification for compliance to international information security best practices. In 2015, the service received ISO 20000 certification for compliance to international service management best practices. CityU is the first University in Hong Kong to be able to achieve this level of compliance. Related to the Paperless Office Service, is Central IT’s work in supporting the University’s new Work Simplification Project (WSP) led by the VP(AD). The objectives of the WSP is “SIMPLE” – S: Stakeholders’ satisfaction, I: Inter-office synergy, M: Manpower & resource optimization, P: Process efficiency & effectiveness, L: Life-work balance, and E: Environmental-friendly operation. IT was used extensively to streamline processes and communications. For example, the Annual Performance Report (APR) was simplified with information/data drawn from various existing central systems; staff recruitment, staff development, and duty visit were all put online; learning management system (LMS), email, and office productivity tools were all migrated to the cloud; desktop virtualization was deployed to facilitate e-learning through BYOD (bring your own device); and many other new e-business workflows.
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The University Web Redesign Project, launched in 2011, was also a major transformation for the University’s online branding. The project converted over a hundred websites and half a million web pages to utilize responsive web design, allowing University web content to be easily viewable on all mobile devices, as well as comply with web accessibility standards and search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. CityU was the first University in the world to achieve this and received numerous IT awards and recognition for this work. Besides mobile Web, CityU was also a pioneer in the mobile app deployment. Several institutional mobile apps were created, including apps for the CityU Announcement Portal (CAP), AIMS, and the CityU NewsCentre, supporting both iOS and Android devices. In 2013, we further launched the “CityU Mobile” app as a one-stop app for common daily functions, such as calendars, individual schedules, locations, contacts, etc. To gear up the transformations, proper management of IT processes via IT Service Management (ITSM) was deployed. Timely user training and technical assistance was offered via seminars, training courses, dial-in and walk-in help services, and on-site support, which are streamlined and provided by the Central IT through the CSC Forums, Staff Computer Courses, IT Literacy Training for Students, CSC Help Desk and Service Counter, and on-site field services. In 2015, IT literacy training for students and staff was pilot offered via lydna.com to meet more cost-effective and timely training needs (details provided under Goal #3).
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Goal #2: Provide Robust and Agile IT Infrastructure “Our IT infrastructure is the backbone for all our ICT services; robustness and agility enables the University to meet demanding and changing needs.” The Central IT is extremely proud of the stability and reliability of our IT infrastructure. To ensure our infrastructure is capable of growing with the increasing needs of the University, we constructed a new green data center, which was put into operation in 2013. It was designed with green and sustainability considerations including PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) improvement as well as raising it to comply with the international TIA942 data center standard for performance, availability, reliability, measurability and manageability. Because it uses the newest green technology, it is highly energy efficient. The reduced total cost of ownership with the new design enables great operating cost savings for the University just on the power consumption alone. For research computing, we remodeled our high-performance computing (HPC) data center to accommodate colleges’ gridcomputing machines. In cooperation with the Joint Universities Computer Centre (JUCC), the network performance for access to such international education and research networks like CERNET, TIEN4, etc., including our HARNET, has been continuously enhanced throughout the past five years, hence staying ahead of users’ needs for effective communication globally, and paving the path for utilizing cloud-based services, to support our cloud-first IT strategy. For the campus network, fiber cables were laid linking up new buildings such as the CMC, AC2, and AC3. Network cabling at AC1 was enhanced and links to off-campus sites were improved. All these works enable quality support for data, voice and wireless LAN, as well as flexible network provisioning to cater for office relocation owing to space utilization, restructuring, and the setting up of new laboratories, classrooms and lecture theatres. In 2014, we began the Phase I of a major 3-year upgrade project to refresh our campus network infrastructure technology to meet the bandwidth demand in the support of the growing computing needs for teaching, learning and research and to upgrade the equipment timely before they reach
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their end-of-support product life-cycle. The Phase I upgrade involves the technology refresh for the network core layer switches to a multi-10GB networks supporting the latest technology such as Virtual Switching System (VSS) and Instant Access with the capability to move towards SoftwareDefined Networks (SDNs), providing the University with agility to grow and supporting crossdisciplinary collaboration between departments. To cope with increased storage needs owing to the migration from physical servers to virtual servers, the support for the Paperless Office Service, and to meet the technology refresh equipment life-cycle, a major enterprise storage upgrade was also performed in 2014. The upgrade solution included the storage capacity of over 100TB storage with auto-tier support with sufficient capacity to meet future expansion requirements. Auto-tiering automatically selects storage tier among the solid-state disk (SSD), fiber channel disk (FC) and the SATA disk types based on the performance requirements of the application systems. This feature provides the flexibility of capacity adjustment for each storage type to meet the demand and hence enables multi-fold reduction of average per unit storage cost. Besides greener approach and space saving owing to increased storage density, we can now enjoy the reliability and the flexibility of SAN storage with a cost much closer to that of the traditional non-SAN storage. Backup solution was also improved through the data deduplication technique which significantly reduced the amount of data transfer and hence the backup time required. This is utmost important to reduce the backup windows for various systems with huge storage volumes as well as to speed up data restore time, when required. The above storage and backup solution also included the Disaster Recovery (DR) support at the DR site. The CSC teaching studios were relocated from AC1 to AC2 in 2011 to support better space utilization of the University. The whole relocation was efficiently completed on time within the summer term providing IT venues and hundreds of software from across the disciplines for teaching and learning. High speed heavy-duty printing services were also set up at appropriate places for convenient access by students. To support the use of handheld mobile devices for teaching and learning, printing from these handheld devices was also supported. To take into account of going green, 100% recycled paper was used in printers, and the default printing mode was set to double-pages so as to promote using less paper.
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Goal #3: Be Efficient and Cost Effective “We understand that resources should be used wisely. That is why the IT organization has constantly explored new technologies that not only provide enhanced capabilities but also cost savings to the University.” Leveraging the cloud is a major Central IT strategic direction to improve efficiency and cost effectiveness. We have adopted a “cloud-first” strategy for all new services whenever feasible. For example, over the past few years, the University greatly increased its use of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). As early as 2010, CityU deployed “Google Apps for Education” and “Microsoft Live@edu,” which provided productivity tools for collaboration, instant messaging, voice/video chat, cloud storage, email, etc. In 2011, we joined “Google+ for Higher Education,” allowing students/staff to easily leverage social networks and video services for teaching/learning. In 2013, we began to migrate all students and all alumni from on-premises SUN JSMS to cloud-based “Microsoft Office 365”, then also all staff from the on-premises Microsoft Exchange to “Microsoft Office 365” in 2014, providing email, calendar, storage, file sharing, and social media on the cloud. In 2014, we began to offer students Office 365 ProPlus, allowing them to install Microsoft Office suite from the cloud on up to 5 desktop machines and 5 mobile devices. In 2015, we began to offer the same service to all staff members as well. The move of all email services to cloud would save the University millions of dollars annually; moreover, users will be able to use the state-of-the-art e-communication technologies without waiting for the on-premises systems to upgrade, as well as better security backed by global knowledge base. In 2013, we began a project to evaluate and select a cloud-based learning management system (LMS) as CityU’s next generation LMS. After an extended pilot in 2014, the University migrated to the Canvas LMS in early 2015. The cloud-based LMS is complemented with other cloud-services such as plagiarism detection and cloud-based quizzes/surveys. Both Google and Microsoft cloud-based productivity tools are also key components to our e-learning strategy for social-learning, and online collaboration/teamwork. Also in 2015, IT literacy training for students and staff was pilot offered via lydna.com, an online training video library, with a view to replacing most traditional classroom training and enabling anytime anywhere learning opportunities for all users in order to match their timely training needs for studies and work, not only in IT but in all disciplines offered in lydna.com. In addition, the CSC has been optimizing our IT infrastructure with sever/storage consolidation and virtualization to create our private cloud. In 2014, we began to adopt VDI to simplify client management. We also began a major project to upgrade and virtualize our network infrastructure as well. The new data center, which we put into production in 2014, represents over 40% improvement in energy/cost savings compared with our old data center, saving the University millions each year. Besides the green data center, the Central IT has many other sustainability-related projects, including the Paperless Office service, which represents millions in cost savings from reduced energy and paper consumption, as well as productivity gain and reduced IT security risks.
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Goal #4: Ensure IT Security Our IT systems contain valuable personal, teaching, and research data. IT security is crucial and will be one of the main focuses in the coming years. Ensuring information security has always been one of Central IT’s topmost priorities. Over the past 5 years, the frequency and sophistication of cyber-attacks have increased by several orders of magnitude. In this regard, a new IT Security Unit (ISU) was established in 2011, headed by an IT Security Officer (ISO) who reports directly to the CIO. This new unit oversees all Universitywide information security policies, guidelines, and practices. As a result, a comprehensive set of “Information Security Policies and Standards” (ISPS) was drafted and approved in 2013. The ISPS governs all aspects of information security within the University. Following the policies, standards, and best practices outlined in ISPS, the Paperless Office service was ISO/IEC 27001:2005 certified in 2013; the first among universities in Hong Kong. In 2011, we deployed the first release of our Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system, which plays a central role in real-time monitoring and analysis of over two millions of daily security events triggered by uncountable daily cyberattacks attempting to compromise our hardware and network devices, as well as enterprise applications. The SIEM system is a multi-year project. Each year, Central IT expands the SIEM coverage to monitor additional devices, systems, and applications as well as enhancing the intelligence used within the SIEM. Though, majority of the attacks were fenced off or alleviated by our multi-level defence mechanism, some could successfully intrude into our system inevitably. Since 2011, the SIEM has successfully detected and enabled Central IT to handle breaches in a timely manner, and minimize impacts. The SIEM received the “2014 CSO40 Award” from the CSO Magazine in USA, which recognizes the top 40 security projects around the world. In 2013, the Central IT began an in-depth review of our information security infrastructure to further strengthen security protection. This resulted in the redesign of our firewall architecture and network topology, with additional firewalls deployed in 2014 and 2015. The new design categorizes servers/ applications according to use, exposure, criticality, etc., and segregates them accordingly with different security controls, thus tightening security and minimizing impact of any intrusion. All new central systems have been deployed following this new design. To provide secured enterprise mobility, in 2014 we began to deploy new rights management and encryption technology to ensure our email and shared documents are secured. Other information security initiatives include a new Host Intrusion Detection System (HIDS) for end-point security, and a Vulnerability Management program to assist with security assessment in the various academic units and administrative offices.
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Goal #5: Enhance Transparency and Organizational Effectiveness “Transparency in how decisions are made and effectiveness of the IT organization in delivering quality services are important aspects of our strategy.” Transparency in how decisions are made is important for any large organization. Partly triggered by the massive amount of IT tasks to support the 4-Year Degree Implementation project, in 2009 the Central IT began to design a process to systematically and transparently prioritize IT projects for budget and resource allocation. The process involved broad consultation with all key stakeholders. A formal scoring mechanism was created in 2012, and incrementally refined yearly since then. Factors considered include alignment with University strategy, business value, cost effectiveness, etc. In terms of service offerings, clearly spelled out service level agreements are in place for key systems to define commitments and expectations. The Central IT believes a transparent organization is also an efficient organization. For organizational effectiveness, we strongly encourage collaboration among IT staff within and across units and offices. To support and promote knowledge sharing and collaboration across the University, the Central IT provides a knowledge management platform based on MS SharePoint, which facilitates document sharing, knowledge sharing, and collaboration. For IT-specific knowledge management, the Central IT deploys an IT Service Management (ITSM) platform, which ensures service management best practices are consistently followed to best serve the CityU community.
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Goal #6: Promote Policies, Governance and Standards “IT policies, governance and standards further strengthen transparency and enhance the quality of service we provide.” IT governance has been strengthened over the past 5 years, ensuring IT resources and funding are used optimally to create value for the University to the best interest of all stakeholders, as well as to manage IT performance and mitigate risks. As early as 2003, the University Senate established the Committee on Information Services and Technology (CIST) to oversee technology provisioning and IT policy matters. In 2011, a new Task Force on Campus IT Needs (TFCIT) was established by the Provost to replace the role of CIST. In 2013, the Central IT began to report to the Vice-President (Administration) and a new Information Strategy and Governance Committee (ISGC) was established to replace TFCIT. With authority delegated by the President, the ISGC now oversees and approves priorities, policies, governance and compliance of ICT services, as well as review and approve long-term IT strategic plans and progress for conformance to University’s strategic directions. The ISGC is chaired by the VP(AD) with broad representation from all key stakeholders. Over the past few years, our various IT policies, regulations, guidelines, and practices have routinely been updated and several new ones were established. For example, in 2012 the University established its “University-wide Web Accessibility Policy”. In 2013, the “Information Security Policies and Standards” (ISPS), “Multifunction Device (MFD) Security Guide”, and “Password Management Policy for User and System Accounts” were established. In 2014 and 2015, major revisions to the “Policy on Use of Information Technology Services and Facilities” and its associated set of regulations were made. Within the Central IT, we have been actively promoting the adoption of international standards and best practices to ensure quality of service we provide. For example, in 2012 we began to promote information security best practices, resulting in ISO/IEC 27001:2005 certification in 2013 for our Paperless Office Service. In the same year, we launched our Project Management Office (PMO) Practices website to promote project management best practices that are aligned with the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK) and the ISO 21500:2012 standard. In 2014, we strengthened our service management practices, resulting in ISO/IEC 20000:2011 certification and upgrading to ISO/IEC 27001:2013 (from 2005 version) certification in 2015 for the Paperless Office Service.
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Conclusion The realization of the above goals was not easy and relied on the hard work, dedication, and collaboration from staffs across many academic and administrative units. There were innumerable challenges along the way and at many levels. However, the experience over the past 5 years has provided the Central IT with a chance to review our practices, and to re-think and re-invent ourselves as a more effective and agile IT organization. We believe this was crucial to our current leadership as one of the most advanced and innovative IT organizations among tertiary institutes in Hong Kong or in this region. Accomplishing the goals of our 2010-2015 IT Strategic Plan has laid a solid framework to facilitate future IT management and technological development. Moving forward, the Central IT is now well equipped to face new advancement needs and challenges, particularly in support of the five strategic themes in the University Strategy Plan 2015-2020 – to provide managed, flexible and secure IT to facilitate in-depth discovery and innovation in education, interdisciplinary collaboration on research, global partnership and entrepreneurship, and good governance and branding.
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Copyright Š 2015 City University of Hong Kong
Office of the Chief Information Officer 16/F, Academic 3, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong Email: cio@cityu.edu.hk Phone:(852) 3442-6979 Fax: (852) 2628-2651