Multidivisional and Office of the CIO
Remedy platform decommissioned
The ITS Service Management Platform Team officially retired Remedy on April 15 after several years of progressively retiring individual applications after moving those functions to newer and better platforms. All Remedy applications have now moved into the ServiceNow platform or other applications. Remedy handled nearly four million Request for Service tickets — 3,860,817 to be exact — during the 22 years of service, from 1998 to 2019.
Data Protection & Purchasing Guide improved
Tiffany Temple of the Information Security Office and ITS’ Kim Stahl, who represents the Data Governance Oversight Group, improved the Data Protection & Purchasing Guide on the Safe Computing website, with support from Gia Branciforte of Digital Services and Kat Moore of the Digital Accessibility Office. The new list provides more details about requested solutions that the Information Security Office and the Data Governance Oversight Group have reviewed. Enhancements include adding vendor names, accessibility notes and more scope notes.
Duo 2-Step Verification for password reset
As of April 5, Duo 2-Step Verification can be used for identity verification during password reset. Duo confirmation replaces the previous challenge question system. The change simplified the password reset process and increased identity security.
Information Security Liaisons members featured
Information Security Office continued featuring Meet the ISL at its monthly meetings and ITS Communications continued to use those interviews for stories in Monday Morning News and ITS News, with profiles on Mark Ingram and Keith Gerarden this quarter.
People
Theresa Silsby and Michael Williams extended their service as delegates to the Employee Forum. Silsby was re-elected to serve through June 2024 and Williams was offered an appointment to serve another year, through June 2023. ITS’ David Bragg and Sharron Bouquin are also Employee Forum delegates. Their terms run for another year.
Customer Experience & Engagement
Kim Vassiliadis gains new title, outlines priorities
Kim Vassiliadis, gained a new title: Director, Digital Experience & Communications. Vassiliadis’ new title reflects the new responsibilities she gained with the ITS reorganization in July 2021 in which ITS Communications and the ServiceNow engagement team moved under her supervision. In that reorganization, Vassiliadis added those two teams to her existing responsibility of leading Digital Services and the Digital Accessibility Office.
Digital Services assists with UODI website redesign
The University Office for Diversity and Inclusion launched its redesigned department website on May 5. ITS Digital Services, UNC Creative and SouthStar Strategies collaborated with UODI on the redesign. Gia Branciforte, Front End Developer for Digital Services, started building the new website last September. The UODI site now adheres to digital accessibility standards.
DAO helps facilitate conference
The Digital Accessibility Office collaborated with the North Carolina Higher Education Digital Accessibility Collaborative to facilitate a free virtual conference on digital accessibility on June 16. Presenters included DAO Team Lead Brad Held and Gia Branciforte of Digital Services. The conference drew 450 registrants, with more than 300 attending. UNC-Chapel Hill had the largest number of attendees from a single institution. The post-event survey reflected positive feedback, with more than 72% of survey respondents said they would “definitely” attend again.
Digital accessibility liaisons program grows
When the Digital Accessibility Office (DAO) launched in 2019, one of its primary goals was to build awareness of digital accessibility across campus. To extend its reach and foster peer-to-peer advocacy, the DAO created a community of practitioners known as the Digital Accessibility Liaisons (DAL). The first DAL meeting on August 14, 2019, drew 40 participants, both in-person and online via Zoom. The group has since grown to more than 170 members.
Annual cleanup of inactive websites
Every spring ITS Digital Services performs an annual cleanup of inactive websites. This year, Digital Services deactivated roughly 900 of 2,500 websites on web.unc.edu and approximately 700 of 2,500 websites on TarHeels.live.
Stories shared externally
During the quarter, ITS Communications produced four items published in WorkWell and featured on In the Know, including Using Duo for password resets will increase identity security, Digital Accessibility Liaisons fosters peer advocacy, Updated Duo prompt increases accessibility and usability and Summer travel tech tips. Several stories featured in the top 10 most-clicked items in WorkWell.
The Digital Accessibility Office also submitted several features for WorkWell, including announcements of newly launched self-paced training for accessible course design and an online accessibility conference co-facilitated by the DAO.
People
Dave Scott stepped into the role of ITS Managed Desktop Services (MDS) manager May 31, after nearly 22 years with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. Scott replaced Anne Vail, who served as MDS manager from 2016 to 2021.
ITS Communications gained graphic designer Kerry O’Sullivan, who moved to the unit to provide services to the entire department after working part-time for Educational Technologies for 15 years. In April, Louise Flinn joined ITS Communication as a temporary Public Communications Specialist.
Information Security & Identity Management
Updated Duo prompt increases accessibility and usability
The Information Security Office deployed Duo’s updated web-based prompt, changing the visual interface and some functionality for Duo users. Duo released the updated prompt to increase overall accessibility and usability.
Podcast releases fifth season
Information Security Office released the fifth season of Data@Rest podcast. Launched in 2019, the podcast aims to make cybersecurity accessible to all audiences. This season is the first as a collaboration between UNC-Chapel Hill and Fayetteville State University.
People
Dennis Schmidt, Assistant Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Security Office, retired April 1, after serving the University for more than 24 years. Schmidt had overseen the Information Security and Identity Management teams since 2018. For the three years before that job, Schmidt served as AVC for ITS’ Infrastructure & Operations division.
Mel Radcliffe, Manager of the Risk Team within the Information Security division, began serving as interim Chief Information Security Officer, leading the Information Security team until the next AVC and CISO begins work. The Identity Management team was temporarily reassigned to report to ITS’ Ethan Kromhout, Interim Assistant Vice Chancellor for Infrastructure & Operations.
Sam Garcia of the UNC Adams School of Dentistry (ASoD) joined the Information Security Office on June 20. Garcia had served as the IT Security Analyst at the ASoD since September 2019.
Infrastructure & Operations
Wireless mobility hits 10-year milestone, looks forward to 5G
UNC-Chapel Hill’s multi-carrier neutral hosting agreement and Distributed Antenna System (DAS) is still relatively novel even as the system marked 10 years since ITS activated it on April 1, 2012. Carolina’s hosting agreement with the carriers, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, runs another five years, until April 2027 and the ITS Engineering team is actively working on bringing 5G to campus to continue to improve speeds, network reliability and connectivity. This strong, reliable connectivity that the DAS system provides also will contribute further to life safety.
New building codes require advanced monitoring and communications capabilities in elevators to enable emergency responders to have a live video feed showing the interior of an elevator and interact with the occupants.
People
John Mack, Assistant Vice Chancellor of ITS Infrastructure & Operations, left UNC-Chapel Hill on June 1 for new opportunities at Cornell University. Cornell recruited both him and his wife, Elaine Westbrooks, Vice Provost for University Libraries and University Librarian.
Ethan Kromhout became Interim Assistant Vice Chancellor for Infrastructure & Operations. Kromhout is also leading the temporarily-reassigned Identity Management team.
Educational Technologies
Canvas learning management system available to all University users
After piloting Canvas during Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 semesters, Educational Technologies moved forward with a site license and made Canvas available to all University users on May 20. Instructors may begin using Canvas immediately, with content migration from Sakai beginning as early as Spring 2023. Both Sakai and Canvas will be available through at least Fall 2023.
Enterprise Applications
Access Request Process and tool re-engineering project
Mechelle Clayton, Interim AVC of Enterprise Applications, began an initiative to solicit feedback from campus users, central offices, Access Request Coordinators (ARCs) and others to understand the pain points experienced in the current Access Request Process and Tool. Several meetings were facilitated to gather this feedback and identify requirements and priorities based on the perspectives of each of the offices that interact with the process/system.
Project Portfolio & Change Management
Team grows to include two new project managers
Two new project managers are the culmination of several years of envisioning, planning and building — and some patience. The pandemic and hiring freezes slowed the creation and then the expansion of this group. The two new project managers are Alison Campbell, previously Customer Solutions Lead in ITS Customer Experience & Engagement, and a newcomer to ITS, Bianca Bonds.
Research Computing
John McGee named Research Computing AVC
John McGee was appointed as Assistant Vice Chancellor for ITS Research Computing after serving as interim Director of the UNC-Chapel Hill group since March 2019. Prior to service as interim Director, McGee led design and implementation of UNC-Chapel Hill’s High Throughput Sequencing Facility for five years and spent nine years at the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), culminating as Director of Cyberinfrastructure. McGee leads more than 15 team members.
People
Mike Waldron retired June 30 after 14 years with ITS Research Computing group at UNC-Chapel Hill. He was the designer and maintainer of the current Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) system, which serves many researchers, faculty and students with a virtual machine imaging, scheduling and reservation system.