ITS collaborates with its customers across campus to ensure we fully understand their needs and align our work with Humboldt’s priorities. Our campus-wide perspective enables us to make the most of sometimes scarce resources and maximize the return on investment by repurposing or otherwise reusing solutions already acquired.

This broad awareness of needs and initiatives drives our decision-making processes on a micro and a macro level:

• We actively encouraging every division to submit proposals for technology project prioritization
• We structure our annual calendar of tasks to accommodate high demand periods
• We review our Change Control processes every week to ensure our work minimally impacts users

We do this through both formal and informal or ad-hoc groups, described in more detail below.

Liaisons to Key Customer Groups 

ITS has designated liaisons with the President and Vice Presidents, each of the three colleges, the Library, Enrollment Management, Financial Services, Student Health Services, and University Police. These liaisons are responsible for:

• discovering and, when appropriate, directly serving the needs of their constituency
• informing and coordinating with other areas in ITS to meet constituent needs
• communicating with their constituents about how ITS can serve their needs
• bringing broad campus perspectives to internal ITS conversations

Technology Project Teams 

ITS operates a comprehensive and broadly inclusive project management practice that brings together technical, functional and leadership participants to guide the evolution of our major software and service initiatives. Every project also includes a customer input channel in the form of a focus group, campus representatives on the project team, or ongoing consultation throughout the project.

The ITS Project Prioritization process ensures that ITS activities are aligned with Humboldt’s highest priorities of the university. Project proposals can be submitted by anyone on campus and are prioritized according to a standardized rubric that includes:

• alignment with institutional priorities
• value to the customer
• cost and return on investment

The Steering Committee that scores proposals includes a representative from every division; each project recommended by the Steering Committee is vetted by the University Cabinet before final approval. 

Campus Groups 

• The Academic Technology Advisory Committee helps guide academically focused technology decisions. The committee will primarily make procedural and technology recommendations for academically related technologies and facilitate communication across the campus. This may be in regards to physical learning environments (labs, classrooms, etc.), online learning environments, new and emerging technologies, and student-owned technology (among other things). 
• The Library/IT group coordinates IT-related projects within the Library, such as
  • standardizing and expanding workstation counts and available applications
  • implementing technical solutions to ensure a student wireless laptop experience is the same as using a wired workstation
  • complex solution implementations that require participation from multiple ITS teams to give community users access to library computer resources
  • The Environmental Resources Engineering/IT group identifies issues from a faculty perspective and helps analyze how those issues affect students. Examples include
    • improved Linux support in computer labs
    • vLinux (virtual Linux) proof of concept deployment for remote lab work
  • TheGeoSpatial Program/IT group also identifies issues from a faculty perspective and helps analyze how those issues affect students. Examples include
    • Enhanced communication processes
    • working closely with faculty on complex software implementation standards
    • improved monitoring and quality of service issues concerning license servers and system administration
    • implementation of a print kiosk solution so students do not have to interrupt classes to request printing
    • investment in data center equipment and improved system configurations to meet programmatic needs
  • Exchange (Academic Department Coordinators) and SAAS (Student Affairs Administrative Support) meetings enable ITS to do demonstrations of and get feedback on new services
  • Business Finance Group meetings enable the data warehouse team and Financial Services liaison to listen for IT opportunities and get feedback.

Internal Working Groups 

ITS has created a number of standing working groups to address specific needs.  Examples include

• Release, Updates, and Fixes (RUF) is a group of functional staff with significant dependencies on PeopleSoft who review and give feedback on upcoming PeopleSoft activities.
• PeopleSoft Modification Governance comprises representatives from HR, Finance, Student and ITS who work in consultation with functional staff to manage customizations of PeopleSoft within the boundaries set by the Chancellor’s Office and with an eye towards maximizing our use of delivered PeopleSoft functionality.
• The Enterprise Change Control Group (ECCG) vets, coordinates, and manages the impact of technical changes on the entire campus, including imposing certain “peak period” change freezes to ensure minimal impact during the busiest times on campus like semester start, semester end, and registration.
• The Computer Security Incident Response Team comprises representatives from University Police, Risk Management, Human Resources, Student Services, the President’s Office, and Information Security to formulate university response to incidents of confidential information exposure.
• The Data Managers’ Group is responsible for ensuring that the university’s data assets are managed in compliance with state and federal law as well as CSU policy.