2024 Technology Strategic Plan
Last Reviewed and Updated: 12/2/24
Support
Establish Baseline Policy
We have needed this document for a while, and it is a work in progress, but we need an overall document that describes our standards for providing PVFA faculty/staff/students with excellent support. It sounds simple but there are many details that need to be accounted for to be successful and will likely be quite a lengthy document.
Justification:
Set SLA's
Service Level Agreements will come once we have the overall policies set but is linked to the overall policy as we mature as an organization. SLA’s are maximum timeframes that we want to adhere to when providing support of PVFA, and also describes actions that occur if these timeframes are missed. Once the SLA is established, we want to bring it to the TSC (Technology Steering Committee) and have that committee agree that these are acceptable before implementing and making formal announcements.
Justification:
Adopt unified helpdesk
The university has chosen a new unified helpdesk that all Technology Services will use, called Team Dynamix. Work is beginning now on the implementation with the goal of being live by next fall. If this timeline happens, we want to be onboarded into this new system as quickly as possible so we can leverage this tool to enhance our existing processes and change management which is currently being done in the legacy ticketing system. ITxT: IT Experience Transformation
Justification:
Develop Internal RACI
RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed; it is essentially a document that describes how the various roles are distributed for any services provided, IT services in this case. The university is currently developing one that describes the responsibilities between the centralized technology services organization and our group that provides day-to-day support, called Academic Operations. Once this RACI has been completed, I want to take it and internalize it for those same functions so it’s clear to everybody within my team what their roles and responsibilities are for each of the IT Services we provide.
Justification: This has been a lower priority issue for us, getting integrated and moved into TDX has been the priority.
Operations
Perforce
Setup a college-wide perforce Server. Adding version control to the applications it supports will be very beneficial and give the school a universal repository for digital assets.
Perforce is an industry standard in many verticals that encompass PVFA and giving our students experience in working with it while they will enhance their skillset in industry.
We are hoping to have this in beta testing during the spring semester and plan for a full rollout for fall 2024.
Justification: Server is running but we are behind schedule getting it integrated with our NetID authentication
Lab Monitoring Solution
PVFA has chosen to move forward with a Lab monitoring system called Sassafras Allsight. It has 2 main parts, KeySight and LabSight. We will be leveraging both products, Keysight monitors software usage and can proxy floating licenses for some of our products and LabSight monitors IT assets and tracks software usage down to the minute so we can make informed decisions on hardware and software refreshes. Sassafras will also allow us to build a real-time map that will be published publicly and will enhance our student’s ability to see where and when computers are available as well as software installed across the entire college.
Justification:
Formalized Change Management
We are in the early stages of implementing a formal change management process. As we are making changes to the systems that power documenting those changes in a complete and consistent manner will be increasingly more important.
Justification:
Projects
Inventory Cleanup
Inventory cleanup is already in progress, but it will take the whole year and we likely still will not have all assets identified and found. We want to have this mostly complete before we undergo a Technology Audit. We consider assets cleaned up once the following are in place:
- TAMU Asset sticker applied
- Information (location & serial number) in canopy is current
- Moved to unified management platforms (JAMF/SCCM)
- Logged as a device in Axonius and correct data flowing in
Justification: Will extend to 2025 Roadmap
Unification of Computer Management
We are undertaking a project to bring the separate management systems onto a single platform. This will create numerous efficiencies in assisting the IT staff in providing a consistent experience for all PVFA faculty/staff/students. This process will be tied in with the inventory cleanup described above.
Justification: Will extend to 2025 Roadmap
Unreal Training
Establishing unreal engine institutional knowledge across the college will be very important going forward. We are working with Epic Games to establish a series of virtual webinars and if successful an onsite series of workshops.
Justification:
Implement Technology Refresh Plan for Classrooms
We have an existing technology refresh plan that has been shown, however we need to build the formalized process around this and that will be the goal for this year. For example, establishing formalized timelines to guide the refresh plan, how to go about adding a new classroom to the plan, etc. We also need to build a software plan that guides how we procure software as a school going forward.
Justification:
Explore Omniverse/AI
As a college we are always looking for the next big thing and two of the biggest right now for us are Omniverse and AI. There are no direct deliverables with this however as we move forward these might be added to the roadmap if the need is warranted. An example is if we move forward with omniverse standing up a college wide nucleus server would likely be part of this.
Justification: • This has been a lower priority issue for us, getting our staff familiar with running Linux based OS’s have been the priority so we can effectively support Omniverse/Perforce.