Open Letter to UF OIT Staff

From Dr. Marc Hoit

The first planning step in a long term process has been taken! On Monday, May 22 more than 50 participants representing the University of Florida community met for an IT planning retreat. I am thrilled about the strong university-wide commitment and broad executive sponsorship for the IT planning process that was apparent at this gathering.

The retreat participation was designed to include a diversity of strategic input as to the IT needs of the units, directions, purpose and improvements. Recommendations for participants were solicited from the Deans of all colleges, the Vice Presidents, the leadership for the Faculty Senate, Student Government and several affiliated organizations. We sought representatives who would bring an overall knowledge and understanding of the information and data needs of their faculty, staff, students and partners. In addition, participants had knowledge regarding their organization's culture, academic structures, business processes and other functional operations. A small group of IT leaders was also invited to serve as resources to fellow participants. Representatives from these areas prepared for the retreat by reviewing local IT issues and reading background articles. The articles were also posted to the meeting website and I encourage you to review them as well.

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Throughout the day, participants brought issues and insights from their diverse areas to the discussion. The retreat was lively, professional and all voices were heard throughout the day.

The morning work began with basic retreat organization and foundation concepts. We reviewed the purpose of this retreat as well as a definition of information services and technology. As agreed to for the purposes of the retreat, information services and technology in its broadest definition includes organizations, functions, processes, knowledge, systems, tools and training in support of creating, acquiring, processing, storing, transmitting, utilizing and securing information.

Next we reviewed the plan for the day including the expectations for deliverables. The participants were clear on the consensus that recommendations rather than decisions would be the outcomes of this retreat.

With agreement on these topics, we moved on to focus on an overview of current state and initial thoughts on the purpose of IT at UF. Groups of seven or eight at each table brainstormed, discussed and debated issues related to the current state of IT at UF. After almost an hour of lively interaction, each group reported out and provided a summary of the local discussion to the larger group. The later portion of the morning session included a synthesis of the current state measurement work. We also worked to identify common themes and planning areas. Though extensive, the lists produced at this retreat were representative and not expected nor intended to be exhaustive.

At the start of the afternoon session, participants changed their seats so that each table had a new representation of views and backgrounds. As with the working processes from the morning sessions, small groups collaborated and brainstormed to identify important themes and then the larger group examined these themes to identify common areas or themes. The afternoon's work included a discussion of possible purposes for IT in general, at UF, and local areas. Based on this broad review of options, we moved on to strategic directions and then to potential recommendations. Working from small groups, each table formulated suggestions for strategic directions and presented these to the full retreat. Working as a large group, the retreat participants then built on the conversations from the whole day to prepare potential recommendations.

Based on the work of all the participants throughout the day, a report is being drafted which will be first sent to the retreat participants for review and comment and then on to the three senior vice presidents, Dr. Fouke, Dr. Barrett, and Dr. Cheek and myself for consideration. The University of Florida administration is committed to a transparent process and this report will also be published to the meeting web page. The retreat was an essential first step that enabled the UF leadership to provide input regarding their organization's goals and related information services needs. The work of the participants at this retreat helps all of us to better know and understand our customer's needs and contribute to effective planning for the future of IT services at UF.

As the beginning of a long term planning effort, there will be many additional opportunities for input, analysis and participation by everyone in the UF community. The University of Florida has an opportunity to move forward through cohesive collaboration to improve both the operations of IT and the contributions of IT to the strategic goals of all of UF. I would like to thank the participants, sponsors and community for contributing to the success of this planning retreat.

Please watch the reorg website (http://www.it.ufl.edu/reorg/) for the posting of the report and for additional meetings and opportunities to participate and provide input.

Marc Hoit

Stand-alone version of this letter, for printing or e-mailing.

Conferences, Workshops, & Presentations

UF Bridges

  • In March, about two dozen folks from UF attended the Alliance '06 meetings in Nashville. Alliance includes the annual conference of HEUG, the Higher Ed User's Group for PeopleSoft. About 5,000 people attended the conference from all over higher education. Tracks included Finance, Student, HR, Business Intelligence, Infrastructure and Support.
  • In May, Tim Fitzpatrick and Mike Conlon attended the first annual Educause conference on Enterprise Systems in Higher Education. Held in Chicago, the conference brought together 300 IT leaders with responsibility for enterprise systems. Topics included ERP and IT Governance.
  • On June 22, Dr. Conlon will present a talk on identity management in Tampa to SUS IT Directors and CIOs.
  • On July 11, George Bryan of UFAD and Dr. Conlon will present an invited talk on Identity Management at the Microsoft Higher Education meetings in Seattle, Washington.
  • On July 19 and 20, Dr. Conlon will give a series of invited talks on identity management to the California State University CIOs in Los Angeles.

UF IT Security

Jordan Wiens Jordan Wiens Presents "Secure Applications" at Peer 2 Peer

Making sure applications run secure code is an important facet of how administrators can protect their networks. This is one topic covered during the April 18 Peer 2 Peer. Jordan Wiens, senior network security engineer, gave a 50-minute presentation on ways developers can code securely to prevent various exploits. Among other issues addressed were SQL injections and error messages.

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Security Team Member Teaches Business Class about Intrusion Detection

The morning of April 18, students in the Decision Information Services graduate program at the University of Florida learned about intrusion detection systems from one of their very own distinguished campus security team members. Jordan Wiens, network security engineer, talked to Dr. Praveen Pathak's graduate students about the history and current technology in IDS. Pathak, who is an assistant professor with the Warrrington College of Business, invited Wiens to speak on behalf of one of his security lectures.

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Security Members speak at GatorLUG

Two University of Florida IT Security Team members spoke about computer forensics and intrusion detection systems, at the Gator Linux User Group meeting on May 17 to teach the Gainesville IT community about open source products and trends.

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UF Sends Representative to National IT Security Conference

During the first week of April, Jordan Wiens, UF IT senior security engineer, attended the seventh annual CanSecWest/core06 conference in Vancouver, BC. The CanSecWest conference is organized every year to bring together leading security professionals to discuss the most current and anticipated IT security trends. This is the second time Wiens has attended.

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Julia Emko Represents UF at 2006 Educause & Internet2 Security Professionals Conference

The Denver Marriott City Center was filled will information security professionals from around the world on April 10-12 to attend the 2006 Educause & Internet2 Security Professionals Conference. Julia Emko, IT security Public Relations Coordinator, was there to represent the University of Florida IT Security Team.

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