Information Technology Services activities summer 2020
New/emerging/changing services
The Information Technology Services (ITS) response to the COVID-19 pandemic escalated significantly during the last three months. Whether assisting faculty and students in their transition to online academic classes or the staff learning how to work remotely, ITS staff were assisting wherever needed. During March and April, the Help Desk saw an unprecedented number of requests for assistance to connect to the campus from one’s home. The Technical Support Team focused all of its efforts in customizing individual systems to support the unique connectivity needs of the staff. In the first week of April, several weeks into the work-from-home mandate, the Technical Support Team returned to campus to set up and configure 200 laptops that Physical Facilities and ITS staff had traveled to Albany to obtain. By the second week of April, students in need of a laptop or “hotspot” submitted their request to Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT). After the CLT validated each request, ITS packaged and sent out a laptop and/or a “hotspot” (preconfigured network device) to the student. These devices enabled students who lacked the resources to continue their academic pursuits remotely to do so. At the same time, the Enterprise Systems and Application Team was busy ensuring all processes were functioning and being modified (as needed) to support remote access operations. Last but not least, the Operations and Infrastructure Team’s diligent efforts in anticipating the full onslaught of online classes and staff access on the network were extremely successful. The network demands during the transition from classroom or office to a remote location went inordinately well. ITS team efforts greatly contributed to the success of Binghamton University making the transition to online classes and remote access go smoothly.
As working from home became the new norm this spring; refunds to students, plans for summer orientations and returning students for Fall 2020 began in earnest. These plans involved modifying existing systems to pro-rate and return funds to students who departed the campus early, extending dropped classes process, modifying the pass/fail option, modifying final exam process as all exams were online, creating methodologies to support virtual summer orientations, work with CBASM to maximize fall space usage based on new distancing limitations, and modified processes to allow students access to appropriate systems despite not having their campus id card. These changes were complex and involved thorough analysis of resultant impacts to ancillary systems and programs. All changes were coordinated and implemented with no issues. The Enterprise Systems and Applications team was able to accomplish all of these and many more support functions for the campus while working remotely.
The Enterprise Systems and Applications (ESA) group made the transition to working remotely very quickly and efficiently. The experiences of those who were in the Alternate Work Location program had been previously shared with the entire group and those earlier lessons learned significantly minimized any impacts to all of the staff working on campus one day and from home the next. One unexpected benefit from the staff working totally remotely was increased productivity, attributed to the staff being able to focus on tasks at hand with minimal interruptions. In addition to the normal volume of projects, the ESA provided direct assistance to over 12 critical, short-suspense projects for COVID-19 support.
Support provided by the Enterprise Systems and Applications team to the Lock Shop in implementing the new key management Keystone system has continued uninterrupted by COVID-19 isolation requirements. In fact COVID-19, and the resultant work from home requirement, highlighted the robustness of the Keystone system. The Lock Shop was able to continue to function with no degradation of services. Keystone software supports the University’s Building Access/Management policy issued last fall and the Morse Watchman key boxes that are being installed throughout the University.
The Chosen Name project is now into Phase 3. This should be the last phase of this project. The level of complexity of this project necessitated it being implemented in three phases. The project will allow any student or employee to identify a chosen (preferred) first name. This project began in January and the first two phases were completed on time with no service interruption issues. The unique chosen name is part of an individual’s record and supplements their legal name in Binghamton University information systems. Chosen names will be displayed in lieu of the legal name in end-user facing systems that do not have a legal requirement to use a legal name. Binghamton University students and employees must still be able to provide government issued identification with their legal name where and when required.
The Information Security Team’s continual focus on information security issues is continually challenged by the seemingly non-stop anti-phishing or scam messages being posted in Dateline and B-Line.
ITS regularly updates our anti-phishing and spam warnings with current informational messaging as the malicious actors out there develop new and nefarious methods to ply their trade. As with any disaster, COVID-19 schemes were no surprise; ITS also publishes and informs our user community of these attacks as soon as we learn of them. Additionally, ITS promoted effective use of Zoom through constant messaging and informational blogs on how to avoid being Zoom-bombed. The volume of malicious phishing messages continues to increase, particularly anything related to COVID-19. ITS works closely with Google to improve Binghamton’s email hygiene by reducing unwanted emails and spam. As soon as ITS becomes aware of a phishing scam or spam emails we blog about it, update our security pages, post to Dateline or B-Line as appropriate, tweet about it and comment to Reddit. Thus far, these efforts have outweighed the negative impacts and numbers of Binghamton employees who have fallen victim to these malicious attacks.
The Information Security Team averaged 185 DMCA (Digital Music Copyright Act) complaints (44% decrease) and over 286 other security issues (41% decrease) in the last three months. Each complaint necessitates thorough investigation and remediation and quite often necessitates involving other IT support personnel and, at times, assistance from the campus legal counsel. Of special note, during this quarter the Information Security Team was consulted on several confidential actions, outside of their normal duties, that necessitated close coordination between legal and law enforcement agencies.
ITS staff completed another 45 projects in the past three months, 128 projects thus far this fiscal year and is actively working on 55 projects with 32 projects waiting for resources (staff available, equipment, vendor support, etc.) and 22 projects on hold. Specifically, there were 12 projects in direct support of COVID-19 support efforts. Demand for ITS support continues with 150 project requests approved, with another 23 pending review and approval thus far this year.
As a result of continued high demand for ITS project resources and an increasing backlog of potential projects, in early June, the inaugural meeting of the recently approved Project Governance Committee (PGC) was held. This committee was created as part of the ITS Project Governance Policy. The primary purpose of the PGC is to help evaluate potential projects and prioritize the work that ITS resources focus on. As the demand is measurably larger than the supply, this meeting was critical at this time to let University leadership decide what projects are most important to address first. This first meeting focused on two areas within ITS: Enterprise Applications and Systems (EAS) and the Innovation Team. The EAS Team’s resource availability through the end of 2020 closely matched the current project workload and as a result of the PGC decisions, projects are being evaluated and mapped out for the rest of 2020. For the Innovation Team, project requests exceeded available resources, so a number of projects were asked to be put on hold for the rest of this calendar year. Additional project requests will continue to add to the backlog for the remainder of 2020 and review by the PGC will continue to be extremely important.
The ITS Innovation Team spent much of this quarter rapidly developing over a dozen new applications and electronic forms/workflows in an effort to quickly implement new University and New York state policies related to COVID-19. The move of summer orientation from on campus to online required the development of a new suite of automated online checklists and asynchronous advising utilities in an effort to retain a high-quality orientation experience for incoming freshmen and transfer students. The new Change of Grade Option policy required the development of an all-new workflow mechanism for students to change from letter grades to P/F (or vice versa), and all subsequent academic and athletic advisor approvals. The New York Forward return to work training video was implemented in the new training and tracking system, which replaced the previous commercial system, developed by this team. NY state COVID-19 daily health screening requirements led to the development of a new tracking system for all faculty and staff. All told, there were over 17,000 new e-form submissions linked to 10 entirely new workflows created directly or indirectly in response to COVID-19 (hiring exemption requests, Federal CARES act submissions, Telecommuting Pilot Program Applications, etc.). At the same time, the Innovation Team completed four previously scheduled projects, including a robust and easily navigable inventory of all campus building drawings (Physical Facilities), as well as a robust centralized database and reporting mechanism for all labs on campus in collaboration with Environmental Health and Safety. These projects were completed by a modestly sized team of three, all of whom worked remotely for the full duration of the quarter.
Upgrades to technical infrastructure
The Security Infrastructure and Support team is presently upgrading the campus door access system software from legacy software (LENEL) to a new vendor platform and software (GENETEC). This is a significant undertaking as the campus has over 4,300 doors with countless access schedules. The move to a new vendor and associated software package was due to significant limitations of LENEL. The campus had exceeded the capability of the LENEL software and after an extensive search, GENETEC was chosen. GENETEC offers a more robust product that meets all of the campus needs for now and the immediate future. Once the installation and customization is complete, the campus will have a more fully integrated door access/security system that will meet our operational needs for years to come.
The Operations and Infrastructure Team continued to support all construction/remodeling projects during this challenging time. Network installations in the Engineering Building continued on the first and second floors, rough-in work in Science 2 continued as did work on the Hinman Dining Hall renovation project. Additional network expansion/upgrades for outdoor areas have been planned and scheduled.
ITS support to the University
The Technical Support Services Team was instrumental in rolling out Zoom technology to everyone. In early March, the campus selected Zoom to be the next web/video conferencing software package. By the third week of March, all students, staff and faculty were successfully using Zoom. This is just another example of how quick Binghamton can react and adopt new technology successfully.
The Help Desk staff received 2,425 calls (5% increase) for assistance and opened just under 4,900 incidents (number of incidents opened remained constant) in Service Now during this quarter. In the last two weeks of March and into early April there was a significant number of calls from professionals and staff related to working from home issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Help Desk was able to resolve 53% of those calls without having to refer the call to second-level support staff. Top support requests for the past three months were: Blackboard, phishing scams, passwords, University owned computers, Zoom, PODS account, and shared network drives. Additionally, Help Desk staff scanned and scored 50 academic tests before all classes went online due to COVID-19. Student printing from mid-March until mid-June was just over two-thirds of a million B&W pages (75% decrease) and almost 18,000 color pages (80% decrease) printed.
From the acquisition and installation of a larger capacity VPN appliance in March, to procuring and customizing hotspot devices for students needing better remote access capability, to processing and sending out laptops, all while continuing work on capital projects (when allowed), the Operations and Infrastructure group remained extremely busy during this period. Through a judicious mix of working remotely to staggered work schedules while on campus, the team kept all projects on schedule.
Operations and Infrastructure looked at various ways to help students, staff and faculty to work from home. The team enhanced the ability to connect remotely to the University network and then looked for where else the team could maintain social distancing while providing easily accessible network connectivity to those who needed to come on campus. Very early into the mandate, the team evaluated, procured and installed the necessary equipment to provide outdoor Wi-Fi service to lot G1. This meant that anyone could drive into the lot, join the University network and work safely. This enabled those students, staff and faculty who were having access issues to come to campus and work while remaining safe in their cars. The team is now looking at what other parking lots they can economically expand outdoor Wi-Fi coverage to.
Kudo
Information Technology Services is pleased to report that Patrick Doyle, a member of the Technical Support Services Team, graduated from Binghamton University this May with a master’s degree in public administration.