Strategic

Goals
2019 – 2022 for OIT

Empowering Legends 1
 Contents
A LETTER FROM THE CIO 4
VISION, MISSION AND VALUES 7
UNIVERSITY GOALS / STRATEGIC PLAN 8

01 TEACHING AND LEARNING 10

02 RESEARCH 14
03 SECURITY & RISK 18
04 ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE 22
05 USER EXPERIENCE 26
06 COMMUNITY & COLLABORATION 30

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 The Office of Information Technology (OIT) team is committed A Letter
from
to providing technology services that support teaching,
research and service at The University of Alabama. The
University of Alabama is where legends are made. It is our

the CIO
mission at OIT to empower legends and advance the University
forward with innovative technology solutions. Along with
providing what’s new in IT, it is also our core mission to provide
reliable IT services to our campus. Exceptional IT Services in Support
of the UA Strategic Plan
Over the past six months, OIT has worked with students,
faculty and staff to identify strategic goals and objectives for
the future of technology at UA. Our staff conducted interviews,
focus groups, surveys and truly experienced the essence of
community that makes The University of Alabama the Capstone
of Higher Education.

We also conducted an internal review of our organization

to learn how we can establish OIT as a great place to work.
Through the feedback our teams received, OIT leadership
established the following goals and objectives for our
organization. Achieving these goals will position The University
of Alabama to meet and exceed its strategic goals.

Roll Tide!
John P. McGowan, Ph. D.
Vice Provost and CIO

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 Our Vision
The Office of Information Technology will be a collaborative
community of IT professionals that serves The University of
Alabama’s students, faculty and staff with innovative and reliable
technology resources.

Our Mission
It is our mission to advance research, teaching, learning and operations
at The University of Alabama by providing exceptional technology
services and support to students, faculty and staff.

Our Values
• We are the trusted provider of reliable IT services for the campus
community.
• We provide outstanding service to our customers.
• We promote cross team collaboration within our organization and
with the broader IT community.
• We empower our employees to create innovative solutions and
accomplish goals that support the organization’s mission.
• We create an open and honest environment, respecting the
knowledge and expertise of OIT team members at all levels of the
organization.
• We foster an environment of continuous process improvement and
we embrace new ideas.
• We embrace and drive change that benefits our customers.
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• We cultivate a positive, one-team culture.
 OIT Goals
University Goals To deliver the campus community exceptional IT services, OIT aligns its goals with the
institutional goals established by UA President Dr. Stuart Bell. OIT will focus on enhancing
and supporting the core areas of teaching and learning, research, security and risk, enterprise

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architecture, user experience, and community and collaboration. In setting our organization’s
goals, we will ensure that OIT’s strategies and plans support the University’s goals and success.

Provide a premier
undergraduate and
graduate education
that offers a global
perspective and
is characterized
by outstanding Support students and Provide IT resources and Secure and protect the
faculty with instructional personnel to support and University’s technology
teaching, high-quality
technologies and services increase the University’s assets and the campus
scholarship and to ensure successful productivity and innovation community through dynamic
distinctive curricular undergraduate and graduate in research. cybersecurity practices.

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and co-curricular learning experiences at The
programs. University of Alabama.

Increase the Enrich our learning and Provide opportunities

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University’s work environment by and resources that
productivity and providing an accepting, facilitate work-life
innovation in research, inclusive community balance and enhance

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scholarship and that attracts and the recruitment
creative activities that supports a diverse and retention of
impact economic and faculty, staff and outstanding staff.
societal development. student body.

Establish effective Establish a consistent and Encourage engagement within

UA Strategic Plan procedures, processes and
services as the foundation
“This is a long-term, living plan. The goal is that five years or 10 years from now, we will arrive at a place that
would not have been possible had we not envisioned it and dared to dream big.” for University student,
faculty and staff technology
- President Stuart R. Bell
use.
8 technology needs.
reliable user experience
for OIT services, tools and
technologies.
OIT to foster an inclusive
and team- oriented work
environment, while building
community between OIT and
students, faculty and staff
to understand and meet
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 01
Teaching &
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Learning 11
 Teaching & Learning
Support students and faculty with instructional technologies and services to ensure successful
undergraduate and graduate learning experiences at The University of Alabama.

Goal 1: Implement innovative technology solutions for classroom,

lab and mobile use. Goal 4: Support faculty in standard and alternative classroom
technologies.
• Implement virtual desktop
infrastructure in classrooms and • Provide instructional video tools, tutorials and workshops for supported enterprise
computer lab to efficiently deliver applications and classroom technologies, as well as the development of innovative course
software and applications in content.
classrooms and lab environments.
• Establish and support communities of practice for niche instructional technologies
• Continue to enhance the campus including podcasting and gamification.
network to support emerging
• Encourage classroom collaboration through group messaging platforms and applications.
pedagogical applications such as 4K
streaming video.
• Increase first-call resolution for faculty by providing tools, training and relevant
documentation to employees in a support role.
• Support mobile apps and platforms
offered in conjunction with enterprise
• Expand internal documentation/knowledge base for support of enterprise applications
instructional technologies.
and classroom technologies.
• Provide integrated learning
• Evaluate tools available to instructional technology support staff and investigate
management system (LMS) tools in
additional support mechanisms including online chat.
support of innovative pedagogy.

Goal 2: Create a consistent and reliable instructional technology

experience for students and instructors.
Goal 5: Evaluate effectiveness of IT services for teaching
and learning.

• Update classroom instructional technology from analog to digital infrastructure.
• Enhance reliability through improved structured preventative maintenance.
• Provide LMS course templates and tool set recommendations for instructors to establish consistent
online classroom experiences.
• Support technology decision-making by providing analytics and dashboards showcasing
instructional technology use.
• Evaluate all enterprise instructional technology solutions and maintain knowledge of
market to make best decision for the campus.

• Regularly ask for student and faculty feedback on instructional technology services and

Goal 3: Provide software and best practices information to help

students, faculty and staff accomplish goals.
applications.

• Embrace campus mobility through new virtual clients, cloud hosting and cloud applications.

• Provide essential software to students, faculty and staff.

12 • Provide access to software tutorials and support through enterprise technology partnerships. 13
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Research
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 Research
Provide IT resources and personnel to support and increase the University’s productivity
and innovation in research.

Expand high performance computing (HPC) resources for

Goal 1: campus faculty and student researchers to increase research
productivity and impact.
•

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Implement UA’s next generation HPC and research storage environments.

Facilitate researcher access to cloud-based research computing and data storage resources.
Goal 4: Partner with Office of Research and Economic
Development to understand needs of research community.
• Expand UA’s data center capacity to accommodate HPC growth. • Foster partnership between IT and research community through regular meetings between
research and IT leadership.

• Cultivate a research technology forum from research computing community of practice to

enact change and provide direction for research computing at UA.

Goal 2: Expand high performance computing support to facilitate

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research growth at UA.
Provide HPC application specialist support.
Goal 5: Ensure a secure environment for research at UA.
• Cultivate the UA research computing community of practice to increase awareness of available resources • Assist with monitoring and review of security in research environments, ensuring proper
and help drive technology road maps. security protocols are maintained.

• Expand technology training and education opportunities for UA faculty and student researchers. • Utilize compliant, secure cloud resources to meet information systems needs of researchers.

• Provide timely research technology resource information and consultation in support of grant • Provide protected researching tools secured physically and in the cloud.
processes.

Goal 3: Enhance network resources in support of research innovation.

• Upgrade network core infrastructure to 40G capability in support of increasing research data demands.

• Prepare UA’s network for 100G capabilities in support of faculty use of XSEDE, Internet 2 and other
national research resources and services.

• Offer network programmability services for research applications.

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 03
Security
& Risk
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 Goal 4: Reduce operational risk.
• Improve threat management by constantly improving threat intelligence.

• Improve data analysis and correlation of University data through security information and event

SECURITY & RISK

management tools to identify threats.

• Implement data loss prevention capabilities, monitoring for transmission of sensitive data.

Secure and protect the University’s technology assets and the campus community
through dynamic cybersecurity practices.
• Regularly test for security weaknesses through internal processes and external resources.
• Introduce vendor and supply chain security reviews through tools and practices.
• Monitor and enhance data governance processes by working closely with UA data stewards to
determine best practices.

Goal 1: Integrate students into OIT security processes.

• Partner with colleges to develop a student-run Security Operations Center (SOC), employing students to
Goal 5: Implement innovative security technologies and end-user
security tools.
actively work and develop cybersecurity skills through undergraduate studies.
• Manage and creatively increase capacity of base security infrastructure.
• Provide student cybersecurity internships, investing in students with an interest in cyber security.
• Implement and manage cloud security services used by students, faculty and staff.

• Provide next-gen business continuity and disaster recovery infrastructure for core OIT security

Goal 2:
Provide end-user security awareness training to the UA
community.
• Partner with UA Human Resources to offer online cybersecurity awareness training for faculty and staff
through the University’s HR learning management system.
• Partner with Student Life to offer online cybersecurity awareness training for all UA students.
• Provide face-to-face cybersecurity awareness training for faculty and staff in departmental and
services and hosted security data and applications.
• Pursue biometric authentication options to provide a better end user experience and improved
security.
• Require multifactor authentication for students, faculty and staff at UA.
• Assess the use of certificates and RF capabilities for authentication with the UA Action Card
environment.

Goal 6: Improve incident response procedures and processes.

divisional meetings, and for students in classroom presentations.

• Continue security outreach to community by presenting to external organizations including the Osher
Lifelong Learning Institute. • Establish and continually maintain playbooks for incident response events.

• Partner with campus entities to establish breach incident management procedures for all
significant threats including specific required procedures for state, industry and federally

Goal 3:
regulated data such as medical information, financial account information, personally identifiable
Maintain compliance with state, federal and business regulations. information scenarios.

• Regularly perform table-top exercises with campus partners involved in breach incidents, and
• Remain accountable to requirements and policies while ensuring preparation for quick reactions to new work to improve processes after test scenarios.
regulatory requirements.

• Implement mobile device management as required by regulation or risk mitigation.

• Improve compliance tracking with regulations; establish and regularly monitor controls.

• Establish an IT compliance team to prioritize and support compliance initiatives.

• Support UA’s Compliance, Ethics and Regulatory Affairs department in the implementation of privacy,
security and third-party risk programs.

• Improve cybersecurity policies for the University.

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Enterprise
Architecture
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 Enterprise Architecture
Establish effective procedures, processes and services as the foundation for University
student, faculty and staff technology use.

Goal 1: Provide next-generation on-premise and cloud-based

application and data hosting. Goal 3: Establish campus user management rules and policies.
• Evaluate appropriate hosting environments for development, test and production applications and
• Establish an OIT access and identity management team to better regulate user access to
services.
systems, applications and services.
• Implement and support cloud-based solutions for enterprise storage, software as a service and
• Identify services that could leverage a central authentication system.
collaborative user environments and client applications.
• Evaluate current identity management tools and federated services.
• Update data center infrastructure to meet on-premise hosting needs, and consolidate, replace or retire
legacy data storage, backup and recovery technologies.
Provide skills and services in support of data analytics/
• Evaluate the University’s best practice for business continuity and disaster recovery plans, and
integrate cloud-based solutions into planning strategies. Goal 4: business intelligence (BI) initiatives across the campus
community.
• Partner with UA’s Office of Compliance, Ethics and Regulatory Affairs to document data

Goal 2: Identify areas to improve efficiencies, unifying and consolidating elements, data mapping, risk and opportunities.

IT services where necessary.
• Consolidate UA’s multiple email environments and enterprise collaboration tools to provide a single,
unified platform for students, faculty and staff.
• Centralize IT resources and establish Consultants in Residents (CIRs) within supported business units to
most efficiently and effectively serve the campus community.
• Increase knowledge and expertise of data analytics/BI concepts and techniques among
OIT staff and the campus community.
• Offer skilled OIT resources to support data analytics/BI initiates.
• Identify enterprise level analytics and reporting tools to support campus initiatives.

• Leverage campus partnerships and reduce project and operational costs by developing strategies to
provide consolidated services and solutions to the campus community.

• Offer additional telephony options such as softphones and mobile phone integrations.

• Leverage technology to create efficiencies through business process improvement and automation.

• Continually review emerging technologies to support digital transformation opportunities.

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 05
User
Experience
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 Goal 2: Improve customer service by better equipping IT Service
Desk (ITSD) to solve problems.
• Increase first-call resolution for students, faculty and staff by providing tools, training and relevant
documentation to ITSD employees.

• Expand internal documentation/knowledge base and increase customer-facing tutorials, how-to

articles and videos.

• Evaluate tools available to ITSD and investigate additional support mechanisms including online chat.

• Formalize service level expectations for ticket resolution or escalation, and standardize service levels
and tools across various OIT service and help desks.

• Publicize available software and ensure ITSD is aware of what technologies are available to campus
constituent groups.

Goal 3: Provide timely and reliable desktop and infrastructure

support services.
• Leverage purchasing power with other campus IT groups, ensuring best price and product possible.

• Ensure supported computers are running appropriate operating systems and software.

• Evaluate function and adoption of remote support tools.

• Evaluate tools available to infrastructure support services.

Goal 4: Create and maintain a consistent project management process.

• Establish a project management review process to determine project priorities by reviewing project

User Experience
criticality, project impact to strategic goals and objectives, project alternatives and OIT resource
availability.

• Provide centralized coordination and reporting of scope, change, cost, risk and quality across all
projects.
Establish a consistent and reliable user experience for OIT services, tools and
technologies. • Increase project communication and collaboration with project stakeholders, project team members
and OIT leadership.

Goal 1: Ensure all campus technology users have access to a

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functional and accessible technology experience.
Train campus content creators on best practices for generating accessible digital content. Goal 5: Enhance faculty, student and staff experience of network
performance.
• Offer assistive technologies providing users the ability to access content. • Migrate campus to Eduroam federated Wi-Fi in support of student and researcher mobility.

• Maintain a campus technology and website inventory, including technology accessibility status.
• Conduct site audits and share evaluation reports with technology accessibility liaisons.
• Facilitate captioning and/or transcription.
• Deploy wireless infrastructure that supports 802.11ax clients and prepare networks for increased
integration with cloud-based data and application hosting services.
• Implement next-generation monitoring tools and data analytics for effective and efficient network
management.

28 • Provide cost-effective and timely network designs for campus construction projects. 29
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Community
& collaboration

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 COmmunity & Collaboration
Encourage engagement within OIT to foster an inclusive and team-oriented work
environment, while building community among OIT and students, faculty and staff to
understand and meet technology needs.

Goal 1: Establish an environment where employee collaboration and

teamwork are encouraged.

Goal 4:
• Promote cross-team collaboration, leveraging skills across the organization.

• Empower managers by including them in organizational decision making and leadership processes.
• Host organization-wide meetings where the organization’s vision, mission and values are clearly
expressed.
• Support continuing education, training and resources for staff to be aware of and to implement
cutting-edge new technologies.
Cultivate relationships within the IT community at UA.
• Foster relationships through the IT Forum, a monthly meeting of campus IT administrators.
• Encourage OIT employees to participate in various communities of practice across the University.
• Host events with campus partners and vendors to bring the UA IT community together.

Goal 2: Develop and invest in OIT team members to recruit and retain
outstanding staff. Goal 5: Increase awareness of IT services and inform customers of
what’s next in IT.
• Provide opportunities and resources that facilitate work-life balance. • Educate the campus community on OIT services, software and support offerings through
interactive events and workshops.
• Offer performance development processes to build successful employees and encourage lifelong
learning. • Provide more content, and better organization of content, on the OIT website for students, faculty
and staff to readily find information.
• Provide training opportunities for OIT employees in technology and also in soft skills such as teamwork,
management and leadership. • Partner with on campus resources to reach students, faculty and staff and share service
information.

• Provide IT technology road maps to the UA community.

Goal 3: Facilitate community among OIT and students, faculty and staff. • Deliver timely information on IT updates and availabilities.

• Develop the student IT forum, creating an open environment for students to share information.

• Foster relationships with faculty, working with Faculty Senate liaisons and other faculty-centric
committees such as the Technology and Learning Committee.

• Empower OIT employees as brand advocates, regularly building relationships with campus partners.

• Establish regular and consistent channels for customer feedback.

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