February 14, 2006 | In
ITS awards "Spot" awards to employees demonstrating acts above and beyond the call of duty. Recipients are honored with gift certificates, and the list of nominations becomes the pool from which the monthly Exemplar Award winner is selected. Fall/winter nominations were recently made public.
In November, co-workers and supervisors recognized Chris Arnold, Tom Cox, Hilary Culbertson, Libby Evans, Joe Fields, Linwood Futrelle, Tim Grant, Mike Harris, Haritha Kuchulakanti, Scott McCall, Steve Segedy and Jackie Strickland-Malcolm.
Also in November, Judd Knott, AVC for Infrastructure and Operations, nominated 26 people for their work recovering from a catastrophic power outage at Phillips on Thanksgiving weekend: Stephen Braswell, Chris Colomb, Chuck Crews, Bruce Egan, Richard Ellington, Rich Fetter, Stephen Fishback, John Godehn, Jim Gogan, Tonya Heath, Matt Heinze, Tyler Johnson, Chris Kaman, Jim Kitchen, Keith Makuck, Larry Mason, Joe Morris, Michael North, Alison Perkins, Sid Stafford, Jan Tax, RC Teal, Ryan Turner, Loren Watterson, Jenny Williams and Lorris Woods.
December recipients were Doug Brown and Scott McCall. January's honorees were Jay Bazemore, Matt Conley and Derek McGhee.
To nominate an ITS staff member for an On the Spot award, e-mail
Nealy Hall.
February 14, 2006 | In
News
,
Newsflash
The Project Tracking System (PTS), a Remedy application, has been undergoing a rewrite guided by a PTS focus group. Additional changes will be deployed incrementally over the next several weeks. These changes should complete most modifications identified by the focus group. No general Remedy service interruption is anticipated with these changes.
Changes planned include the following:
- Improved security in field access, with write permission restricted to project members.
- The menu choices and functionality associated with the "Project Status" field will be changed.
- The Deliverables, Tasks and Milestone tabs/fields will be consolidated into one tab identified as "Action Items."
- A new tab/fields identified as "Issues" will be deployed to allow any project member to document project issues as they become known.
- All current PTS Join/Reporting tables will be consolidated and replaced. The new tables will be fewer in number and will be provided with a Web-based data-dictionary type document. Individuals currently referencing the existing join/reporting tables to generate their own Crystal reports will need to reference the new tables.
Additional documentation about these changes is on the Web at
http://www.unc.edu/remedy/remdev/pts/index.html.
--Submitted by
Dan Wingate
February 14, 2006 | In
News
,
Bulletin Board
We know you're out there! ITS staff who are members of local bands are invited to share their bands' names, musical styles and schedules. Please e-mail
The Hub at
its_communications@unc.edu with the details and we'll announce them as our publication schedule permits. Here are two:
Amber Alley, a band that includes ITS's Brett Vasu and Bruce Egan, will be playing The Cave at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 4. On the Web:
www.myspace.com/amberalley.
Ken Yow and Jeremy Buenviaje are in the Franklin Street Band, which will be playing at the Carolina Crossroads Bar in the Carolina Inn from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 24, for the "Shake Your Winter Blues" party. On the Web:
http://www.thefranklinstreetband.com/.
February 14, 2006 | In
News
,
Bulletin Board
Dan Reed is serving as a signatory in a national ad campaign promoting economic and technological competitiveness. The ad, which began running Wednesday, Feb. 8, includes the names and support of many research and technology industry leaders, such as UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser. Reed signed as chairman of the Computing Research Association.
The ad, which ran Feb. 8 in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and four Washington, D.C., publications (The Hill, Roll Call, CQ Weekly and National Journal), promotes the National Innovation Initiative (NII). The initiative focuses on key competitiveness issues such as greater support for basic research, improved math and science education and increased incentives for research and development.
Many of the initiative's goals were addressed by President Bush in his 2006 State of the Union address. Supporters of the NII hope that Congress will legislate later this year in support of America's leadership in science and research.
To view the ad as a PDF,
click here.
To learn more about the NII, visit
www.InnovateAmerica.org.--HKC
February 14, 2006 | In
News
,
Newsflash
You are reading the third 2006 issue of
The Hub, a biweekly newsletter published by, for and about ITS. The goal of this publication is to provide timely information about the services and activities of our department and to support the ITS community. We welcome your comments and suggestions and encourage you to submit your stories and announcements to
its_communications@unc.edu by
5 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21, to be included in the next issue.
February 14, 2006 | In
News
,
Newsflash
The IT Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) met for the first time on Tuesday, Feb. 7.
Charged with creating a transformative vision for IT at Carolina, one that will show us how to use technology to be the leading public university in the nation, the SPC consists of four committees and a coordinating committee.
Coordinating Committee
The Coordinating committee will chart the high-level direction of the SPC, ensuring that the technical committees collectively examine the full range of IT issues with minimal overlap and duplicated effort. The committee will also be responsible for integrating technical committee insights and producing the final planning document. There are 12 members:
--Carol Jenkins (chair), Health Sciences Library
--Margaret Dardess, Office of the Provost
--Shelly Earp, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center
--Jose-Marie Griffiths, School of Information and Library Science
--Nancy Suttenfield, Finance and Administration
--Judith Wegner, Chair of the Faculty Council
--Todd Gamblin, Graduate Student Representative
--Colin Hicks, Undergraduate Student Representative
--Laurie McNeil, Education and Learning Committee Chair
--Neil Caudle, Research and Scholarship Committee Chair
--David Potenziani, Communications and Networking Committee Chair
--David Perry, Enterprise Applications Committee Chair
Dan Reed and Robyn East will attend on behalf of ITS.
Education and Learning Committee
The Education and Learning committee will examine all aspects of the use of IT in education, including but not limited to novel educational approaches, distance and continuing education, educational IT infrastructure, the Carolina Computing Initiative (CCI), pedagogical assistance, classroom support and staff and faculty training and enrichment. There are 10 members:
--Laurie McNeil (chair), Department of Physics and Astronomy
--Linda Carl, Friday Center for Continuing Education
--James Johnson, Kenan-Flagler Business School
--Christopher Jones, Department of Mathematics
--Steven Melamut, Law Library
--James Noblitt, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
--Lisa Norberg, Academic Affairs Library
--Abigail Panter, Department of Psychology/Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars
--Iola Peed-Neal, Center for Teaching and Learning
--Carol Tresolini, Office of the Provost
Priscilla Alden and Charles Green will attend on behalf of ITS.
Research and Scholarship Committee
The Research and Scholarship committee will consider all aspects of the use of IT in research and scholarship, including but not limited to high-performance computing, digital data management, scholarly publication and curation, information security and privacy, research software support, research computing infrastructure, and collaboration facilities and techniques. There are nine members:
--Neil Caudle (chair), Research and Economic Development
--Barbara Entwisle, Carolina Population Center
--Joel Kingsolver, Department of Biology
--Sarah Michalak, School of Information and Library Science
--Gary Marchionini, School of Information and Library Science
--Gene Orringer, School of Medicine
--Lee Pedersen, Department of Chemistry
--Harvey Seim, Department of Marine Sciences
--Todd Taylor, Department of English
Ruth Marinshaw and Steve Cornelison will attend on behalf of ITS.
Communications and Networking Committee
The Communications and Networking committee will consider all aspects of digital communication, including but not limited to next generation telephony; wireless networking; local, state, national and international networking; Web content processes; information sharing and content management; and usability and access. There are nine members:
--David Potenziani (chair), School of Public Health
--James Alty, Facilities Services
--Alan Blatecky, Renaissance Computing Institute
--Kevin Jeffay, Department of Computer Science
--Paul Jones, School of Information and Library Science
--Lisa Katz, News Services
--John Kichak, UNC Health Care
--James Kessler, Disability Services
--James Porto, Faculty IT Advisory Committee and School of Public Health
John Streck and Audrey Ward will attend on behalf of ITS.
Enterprise Applications Committee
The Enterprise Applications committee will consider all aspects of mission-critical University applications, including but not limited to financial, student, personnel, alumni, e-mail and communication applications, as well as institutional data management. There are 12 members:
--David Perry (chair), Office of the Dean, School of Medicine
--Laurie Charest, Human Resources
--Fletcher Fairey, University Counsel
--Andrew Johns, Research and Economic Development
--Jason Li, College of Arts and Science
--Alice Poehls, Registrar
--Elmira Mangum, Office of the Provost
--Brian Payst, Student Affairs
--Roger Patterson, Finance
--Shirley Ort, Scholarships and Student Aid
--Jean Vickery, University Advancement
--Lynn Williford, Institutional Research
Stephanie Szakal and Doug Brown will attend on behalf of ITS.
February 14, 2006 | In
News
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Newsflash
In last week's Service Managers Council, director of business applications Mark Kozel announced that the state has approved the new Common Payments System (CPS) required to meet stricter security standards. Career Services will be the first user of the new system.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has more than 30 merchants that accept credit cards over the Web, as well as many units that allow remote entry (that is, a purchaser may call the unit and supply a credit card number, which is then entered in the system by an operator). In order for these units to fit in with the state's financial system, they have to use the CPS software mandated by the Office of the State Controller. The Carolina campus is host to a local stub of CPS, which interacts with the controller's CPS software. Other campuses and other divisions of state government also use CPS and have their own local hosts.
In June 2005, both Visa and MasterCard issued data security standards aimed at decreasing the incidence of--and credit card companies' liability for--fraudulent credit card use. Known as the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards, the rules allow for non-compliant merchants to be penalized and fined, in some cases as high as in the six figures, said Kozel. With its high number of merchants, Carolina was vulnerable to potentially huge fines in the event of a security breach. (There have been no such breaches.) Besides the fines, the credit card industry could deny non-compliant merchants the right to accept credit cards at all.
Meeting the standards meant significantly revising the CPS statewide. The Office of the State Controller therefore contracted with Ambiron Trustwave to help state-funded merchants complete a required 85-point questionnaire and arrange for a third-party network scan. Both steps address issues like IT security, backup and configuration--and no wrong answers are allowed.
Kozel reported that the local version of CPS was already nearing the end of its lifecycle, and some code needed to be rewritten to improve scalability and efficiency. The PCI standards gave UNC-Chapel Hill the opportunity to address these issues, but required the purchase and installation of five new servers to manage the Web, database, applications, test and development functions. Once the servers were installed, the state had to approve the new configuration. That has been done. The questionnaires are underway. Many of Carolina's merchants will be able to fill out the questionnaires as a group, Kozel said, and Ambiron Trustwave is arranging the network scan. "We expect to be substantially compliant with the PCI standards by the end of February," said Kozel. "Enterprise Applications staff will coordinate support with application owners to smooth the process as much as possible."
February 14, 2006 | In
Welcome two new ITS employees.
Renee Massey is the new administrative officer in ITS-HR&FP, joining us from Purchasing Services.... Also in Financial Planning, accountant
Lay San (Christine) Teo was previously at the Schools of Education and Medicine.
