Develop and execute a strategy with UMB stakeholders by June 30, 2019, to address any deficiencies with technology to support UMB's health, legal, and social work programs in those areas. 

CITS, in collaboration with other UMB departments, has continued to participate on the working group that is designing and building-out the new Community Engagement Center (CEC).  The CITS team has designed the computing network in the renovated building and for the new CEC space, as well as having provided the specifications for the computers, audio-visual equipment, and the cameras that will be installed in the new CEC space.  The CITS network team has also been working on pulling fiber-optic cabling from the UMB Grid facility to the new CEC building, which will provide the network connectivity needed by the CEC operation. 

During the reporting period, CITS staff have been working with CEC staff to advise and assist with the installation of antennas on Bio-Park building so that a wireless network could extend into the Bio-Park communities.  We have also engaged with a non-profit organization called Projectwaves.net to help with a plan for extending wireless connectivity from James McHenry Elementary School to the antennas on Bio-Park buildings. 

The most significant activity during this reporting period have been our conversations with Comcast Corp.  After several meetings we have a tentative agreement where Comcast would provide Internet access for up to 1000 residences in the Bio-Park communities at a subsidized promotional rate of $9.95, and that this promotional rate would be extended for a term of 5 years.  With a Sponsored Service Agreement, UMB would subsidize or pay in full that guaranteed rate for residences in the Bio-Park communities.  As of June 30, this deal was not final, but it is a promising solution that hopefully will get done to address the dire digital divide problem in these Bio-Park communities where Internet access is unaffordable and unavailable. 

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

Develop and execute a strategy with UMB stakeholders by June 30, 2019, to address any deficiencies with technology to support UMB's health, legal, and social work programs in those areas. 

During this reporting period, CITS personnel worked with personnel in the Maryland Global Initiative Corp. (MGIC) and IHV to discuss, develop, and execute a strategy for better communications and data management via Microsoft Office 365 and the Azure infrastructure as well as with using Zoom audio/video conferencing. 

We also worked with personnel in the UMB Center for Global Engagement as well as the Center for Global Engagement Advisory Committee to introduce strategies and advise them on IT security so that any possible deficiencies with IT security could be addressed.  We also provided helpful content about information technology and the IT services provided by the Center for Information Technology (CITS) in the Center for Global Engagement Internationalization Report. 

In addition, during this period, advice and assistance was provided by CITS to the IT teams residing in African countries regarding IT infrastructure, data management and information security.

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

Evaluate annual statistics of network utilization and capacity, and collaborate and coordinate with school and department personnel to make strategic investments in the network infrastructure to ensure adequate network transmission capacity for innovative research, scholarship and clinical sciences initiatives.

Significant network advancements and achievements were made during this reporting period.  The following are those additional investments/enhancements:

• Completed a major network upgrade for the Annapolis Office
• Installed additional fiber in the Bio-Park to accommodate the network needs of Pharmaron
• Enhanced cellular and wireless service in the basement of the SMC Campus Center
• Provided network connectivity to the Amazon AWS infrastructure so that UMB researchers could use this service
• Finished building a redundant UMB network by moving network equipment to 620 W. Lexington from Howard Hall
• Upgraded the VPN infrastructure in preparation of COVID-19 tele-working and tele-education solution to handle 10G and up to 10,000 Users.
• Replaced and upgraded the UMB network monitoring tool so that we can better measure network utilization and capacity

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

During the reporting period, the development and implementation of the Amazon AWS cloud infrastructure and a process and procedure for UMB research entities to use this infrastructure was completed.  This included a procedure for establishing an account for billing, and the education and training of UMB personnel.  This powerful cloud infrastructure is now available as a service for UMB researchers to securely store, process, manage, and access their research data. 

The second major achievement that continues to develop is the establishment of a Data Trust Committee, which is comprised of individuals in UMB and UMMS.  It is chaired by Dr. Bruce Jarrell and Mr. Jon Burns.  A DTC sub-committee has met many times during the reporting period to work on a Data Use Agreement between UMB and UMMS, and an agreement with a company called TriNetX, which will store data that will be used for research purposes.  The UMMS data stored in the TriNetX infrastructure will be used to support the UMB/Johns Hopkins Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA).  This UMB-UMMS Data Trust Committee will provide oversight, develop policies, and make recommendations related to research use of patient data in clinical systems of the University of Maryland Medical (UMMS) entities.

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

During the reporting period, the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning with Technology made tremendous progress.  The following are three major recommendations and many accomplishments under these recommendations.

Expanding resources for faculty teaching and learning with technology via the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning.

Recommendation number 1:

The FCTL will leverage technology to offer faculty development, to promote new e-learning tools, or adopt/expand instructional design services. 

            Progress:

a. Launched FCTL website February 2020, including faculty featured tutorials.

b. Since early March, the FCTL focused on COVID emergency remote teaching and now recovery. They leveraged the UMB Online Teaching Community to offer webinars and discussions through WebEx to assist in the virtual transition.

i. Created a Blackboard template faculty could use for quick transition during COVID.

ii. FCTL hosted and recorded a ScreenCastomatic webinar and discussion by Dr. Isabell May. iii. FCTL hosted and recorded a VoiceThread tutorial by Ashlie Kauffman, School of Social Work.

c. Created virtual faculty tutorial on Strategies for Effective Online Teaching https://www.umaryland.edu/fctl/.

d. Produced educators’ video with Pharmacy faculty on “How to work with the Instructional Design Team”, Dr. Leah Sera.

e. Launched FCTL Instructional Hub in March using Microsoft Teams to push out USM information to educational technology contacts within the schools (February 2020).

f. Launched Diversity and Inclusion resources for anti-racism education of faculty on FCTL website; continue developing content.

g. FCTL created a virtual Medical Educators Essentials Course (MEdEC) in Blackboard for the SOM UME faculty for Course Directors and leaders in the new Renaissance Curriculum, Drs. Devang Patel and Nirav Shah.

h. Collaborated with Deborah Levi in office of disability resources on FCTL website section for accessibility in online learning and universal design for learning.

Recommendation number 2:

Identify, evaluate, create, and cross-promote existing faculty teaching and learning resources in the schools.

i. Hosted a Team-based learning workshop for SOM and Physician Assistant faculty (January 2020).

j. Participated in Faculty Meetings and Town Halls in Law and Pharmacy-Engaged in 15 individual, and approximately 100 total faculty consultations in online learning services and educational tutorials, since April 2020 (includes 30 members of the Didactic Recovery Task Force).

k. Participated in the Didactic Recovery Task Force.

l. Collaborated and promoted USM resources including:

i. Best practices for Privacy online,

ii. USM On Track, a recovery initiative led by the Kirwan Center offering Professional Development courses by Quality Matters and

iii. Coordinating iDesign, and instructional design resource to support UMB faculty.

m. Developed 24 educational videos for online courses.

n. Engaged in partnership with SSWK and University of Michigan to develop a MOOC on Intimate Partner Violence education.

o. Built year-end summative assessment in Blackboard for Physician Assistant program in Graduate School.

p. Advising SOM Curriculum team on revising Curriculum Evaluation plan in new curriculum, Drs. Joe Martinez and Constance Lecap.

q. Coordinated, launched, and analysis of campus-wide survey on Faculty COVID-19 impact.

r. As of June 15, the Center is developing 14 new courses in Blackboard and re-offering 40 courses, for a total of 54 courses for Fall 2020 semester. These courses include graduate school, law, pharmacy, dentistry, and others (e.g. develop student COVID research safety training in Blackboard).

s. Advised and cross-promoted the Global Teaching Fellows program.

t. Launched Educational Scholars program, now accepting applications for September 2020.

u. Co-hosting Teaching with Technology (TWT) Conference date TBD; working on virtual materials for dissemination.

v. Served on School of Pharmacy task forces to identify best practices for assessment and instructional support in Fall 2020. Will include an online Team-based learning seminar for Pharmacy faculty (July 9, 2020).

w. Chaired the Faculty Professional Development Committee in Graduate School.

x. Enhancing and dissemination of Storyboards and Quality checklists for online education for use by schools.

Recommendation number 3:

Continue to meet with faculty from each school to discuss and identify strategies for professional development and the innovative uses of technology in teaching.

y. A faculty working group is helping Christina Cestone, Executive Director, with the program for the 3rd annual UMB Teaching with Technology Day in spring 2020. Unfortunately, this event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

After the successful launch of Microsoft Office 365, CITS began a campaign to train individuals in central administration departments and in UMB schools.  During the reporting period, the following formal training sessions were held:  Microsoft Teams/Being a Teams Owner: 26 sessions (240 participants); Office 365 Working From Home: 9 sessions (77 participants); Microsoft OneNote: 2 sessions (19 participants); SharePoint Collaboration: 4 sessions (79 participants).  There were numerous other personal training sessions held during the period and CITS prepared and posted a wealth of Office 365 instructional resources on the following webpage: http://www.umaryland.edu/office365/.  The web page includes video snippets, how-to documents, and instructional guides for using Microsoft Office 365 applications. 

To expand the toolbox and the knowledge of contemporary productivity tools, CITS also successfully provided numerous personal training sessions to use Cisco Webex and Zoom audio/videoconferencing. 

In addition, another campus-wide security awareness training campaign was launched.  While the training campaign was not completed by June 30, we expect that we will achieve at least the 80% target completion rate.  The KnowBe4 security awareness application was used again for this training.

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

In FY 2020, the list of CITS staff professional development activities indicated that 101 of the 110 CITS staff (92%) participated in at least one professional development/training activity.  We are continuing to promote the acquisition of new knowledge, additional expertise and career development in CITS.

Percent Complete:

Almost Completed/Milestone Achieved (93%)

Planned to occur again for this fiscal year, at a CITS all organization meeting scheduled for this spring, a member of the Diversity Advisory Council (DAC) was to give a presentation to CITS staff.  We have done this the past two years, and it worked very well in providing information about the DAC, its mission, goals, accomplishments and events.  However, this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the work activities related to COVID, we couldn’t get the DAC meeting scheduled.  We also missed out on having other CITS meetings to discuss cultural competence as we had in previous years.  CITS, as an organization, continues to embrace and celebrate a climate of diversity and inclusion.

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

During the reporting period, UMB collaborated extensively with USM institutions, other higher education institutions, K-12 schools and leveraged the buying power of the Maryland Education Enterprise Consortium (MEEC). Examples where IT savings have been realized for UMB include: via the USM coordinated Maryland Research and Education Network (MDREN) for reduced cost access to the Internet; through the cooperative UMB/UMCP arrangement with the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX), where UMB is provided access to the high-speed Internet2 network and in exchange for this access, UMCP has located MAX networking equipment in the 300 West Lexington Street computing facility at UMB; through the USM-wide Cisco contract for network hardware maintenance; via the USM-wide Palo Alto contract for network security equipment; via Internet2 for waived egress fees for Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and for Duo multi-factor authentication, and other Internet 2 services; and, via MEEC to achieve significant volume discounts for Microsoft licenses, Apple hardware, Dell computers and servers, and other software including:  Symantec, Adobe, InCommon, Terminal4, Carbon Black, and MicroFocus; and for consulting services via the use of MEEC resellers that deploy and support enterprise applications, e.g., instructional technology systems, student system, IT security-related systems, etc.  Also, UMB facilitated the consolidation of the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) contracts from all USM schools to a single contract that UMB administers.  Lastly, UMB collaborated with UMCP to maximize the volume discount and the purchase of Mathematica and ArcGIS.  The volume discount for these products has been made available to other USM institutions.  The MEEC and USM IT cost-saving agreements noted above were shared with and made available to the UMB community via the CITS Software Licensing Office, UMB websites, and in other media and forums.

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

The significant accomplishment that occurred was the completion of the project to consolidate the Kuali Research application for use by both UMB and UMCP.  There is now one database instance and common access to the application from both universities.  The project achieved a key goal of allowing combined reporting of research proposals and awards generated by both universities. 

During this reporting period, both universities continued to work on developing a consolidated UMB/UMCP research productivity report. The MPower Steering Committee approved the hiring of a Data Analyst who will focus on working with personnel at both universities, and with the combined data in the Kuali database, to generate these consolidated reports.  The recruitment of this position is currently underway, and when the position is filled, the electronic process for developing these reports will be finalized so that the reports can be generated quickly and as needed. 

Also during this reporting period, both institutions collaborated to address many issues related to COVID-19, including sharing approaches and work related to symptom assessment testing, contact tracing, and performing a mapping exercise to locate areas in the State of Maryland where there are gaps in Internet access.   

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

During the reporting period, CITS partnered with Administration and Finance to develop and implement Oracle’s Cloud Financials, Planning and Budgeting, and Analytics solutions.  These modern cloud applications are based on best practices and provide a platform for improving business processes and enhancing our ability to make data driven decisions. 

The new Quantum financial system was rolled out to the campus in October 2019.  It is currently in the “stabilization phase” where based on input from the campus community, adjustments are being made to processes and functionality. 

The new financial system project included the development of an entirely new platform for reporting.  During the reporting period, a contemporary analytics software was introduced, a new Data Analytics Office was created, and a new AVP for Data Analytics was hired.  This new platform will allow for more sophisticated analyses that will generate reports and dashboards with indicators that will be helpful to decision-making.

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

Administer a Center for Information Technology Services (CITS) satisfaction survey in fall 2018 and in fall 2021 and every third year thereafter, to assess the degree to which faculty, staff and students are satisfied with the array of services provided by electronic systems and staff operations so that we can identify areas in which we are succeeding, point to the services we need to improve and highlight the areas in which we need to offer new services. 

Assessment of IT Services

IT Satisfaction Survey 

• An IT satisfaction survey was administered in March 2019 and a report was generated in July 2019. The following two items provide an important benchmark of IT satisfaction, as recorded by faculty, staff, and students.  

• The goal was to achieve a mean score of 4.00 or better for each item on the survey. 

How satisfied are you that IT personnel take a “customer-oriented” approach to helping you? 

Please rate your overall satisfaction with the IT services you receive.

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

The Information Security Collaborative (ISC) includes participation from IT leaders, information security professionals, and other IT professionals from CITS, all UMB schools, FPI, and UMMS.  There is consensus among the individuals participating in the Collaborative that an enterprise-wide approach to information security is absolutely necessary.  It is important that an Information Security Program that adheres to Federal, State, USM, and other mandatory security rules, requirements and guidelines in order to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data. 

During the reporting period, there was a special focus on performing comprehensive scans of computers and servers located in every school and department at UMB to locate any vulnerability(s).  We have been using a powerful tool called “NESSUS” which is very effective in finding any vulnerability, and which is very helpful in our efforts to mitigate any found vulnerability.  This tool and special effort to do these daily scans is helping strengthen our IT Security Program. 

During the reporting period CITS assisted the School of Pharmacy with their IT audit, which was performed by the USM Internal IT auditors. 

There was extensive and collective work done by the ISC and schools and departments to address IT security items related to the COVID-19 pandemic.  IT leaders and security professionals collaborated to develop important IT security tips for working remotely and addressed numerous questions about the security of home and mobile devices. 

Furthermore, IT staff did comprehensive and extensive work checking UMB machines for proper security settings before they were moved off campus to support tele-work and tele-education.  Lastly, new IT security tools were purchased to enhance the security of devices installed on-campus as well as devices connected to the UMB network from remote locations. 

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

Collaborate with school instructional technology personnel as well as with budget and finance personnel in developing a campus-wide instructional technology infrastructure plan by June 30, 2018, and make strategic investments in the instructional technology infrastructure as needed in subsequent years.  

The UMB instructional technology plan was enhanced this past year by the introduction of the WebEx Training and Webex Events modules, which have improved the on-line classroom experience for students. 

Since the launch of the Cisco Communication/Collaboration solution, UMB faculty have learned new ways to improve their on-line teaching and ability to enhance the on-line classroom experience for student through the use of the Webex Training module.  

The roll-out plan for these WebEx “room kits” across schools and departments was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.  

The work activity shifted from an on-campus focus to helping faculty and students use a virtual instructional technology infrastructure.  A number of new instructional technologies were implemented during this reporting period, and more specifically just before and during the COVID pandemic.  Some examples include:  Zoom; Learning Spaces; SmartEvals; Voicethread; Proctoring software; etc.

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

This past year, the Maryland State Office of Legislative Audit (OLA) completed an IT audit at UMB.  After spending nearly five months at UMB, and hundreds of hours checking applications and systems, collecting data, reviewing documentation and asking questions, they gave us just one IT/IS discussion note (DN).   The one Discussion Note was not deemed worthy to be included in the final University of Maryland, Baltimore Audit Report that was published in July 2019 and has been made available to the public.  There weren’t any IT/IS finding(s) in the final legislative audit report for UMB.  Having just one Discussion Note and no final IT finding is a monumental achievement.  It is very rare for any Maryland state institution or agency that is audited by the OLA not to have at least one final IT report finding, and even rarer to have just one DN.  UMB has a very complex IS/IT environment, and the OLA auditors noted and appreciated the complexity of the IT environment that we work in every day.  They also appreciated and recognized all of the new policies, procedures, standards, technologies, etc. that were implemented during the three years since their last audit. 

During the reporting period, the work to implement the one item that they noted has been completed.  There are no additional OLA requirements from their audit that need to be completed.

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

Coordinate IT Help Desk operations

A shared collaborative incident management (helpdesk ticketing) application was implemented in August of 2015 to improve the customer experience.  It is aligning the distributed helpdesk units and provides each group the tools and ability to leverage the resources of one another.  There are ten different support units that have adopted the common incident management system and they are coordinating their support operations.  Over 56,000 incidents have been recorded in FY 2020 using this common system, an increase of 8.7% over the same period in FY 2019.  The number of requests transferred between helpdesk teams continues to grow, as older processes are replaced by the incident management system. 

In addition, through an on-going assessment of service indicators and current operations, new opportunities for strengthening the service provided continue to be identified and implemented.  The UMB Schools participate in those assessments, and based on their input and feedback the Campus IT Helpdesk operations continue to evolve.  

The IT Helpdesk has continued to engage with NPower, a local company aimed at providing professional IT opportunities to individuals in underserved communities.  Since beginning this relationship in FY 2018, eight Interns from NPower have worked with the IT Help Desk team for varying lengths of time, with several joining the team in longer-term contracts.  FY 2020 saw six NPower Interns on the team.  Two of those Interns stayed beyond the initial engagement in contract positions, with another completing her 2^nd year as a contract employee.  Given the success of these relationships, in the Spring the team brought on a student worker for the first time.  While it was a short engagement, the success of that experience has created a path forward for similar relationships in the future. 

FY 2020 also saw several experienced technicians leave the Help Desk, all in a relatively short period of time.  This created a knowledge vacuum, into which several new employees have been brought to rebuild the team. 

The sudden dramatic and unprecedented changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic have challenged the Help Desk in ways unimagined before the global emergence of the Novel Coronavirus.  With only a few days warning, the Help Desk became a 100% telework operation, supporting our large and diverse community of users as they too became teleworkers and remote learners.  In an instant, most of our end-users needed to learn how to work and communicate from home.  In many cases, the tools and access were already in place, so the transition was merely one of training.  But for many other users, access had to be granted in addition to the training.  Communication and collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive, VPN and Remote Desktop, WebEx and Zoom, have all taken on a much greater importance for our users.  The deployment of Quantum Financials and Analytics in the fall also resulted in a dramatic increase in the need for help.  With most users working remotely, the traditional approach of on-the-job training by one’s closest co-worker became that much more challenging.  As a result, the IT Help Desk has seen an increase in requests for assistance with these tools and systems. 

The Help Desk began using a new telephone system which allows routing of calls to the technicians working from home.  The team is supplemented by technicians from the Desktop Support and Enterprise Training groups as backup.  And as a failsafe, calls are routed to an answering service where a human is available to speak to the caller 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.  The result is an increase to greater than 94% of calls answered by a CITS technician, and no calls rolling to a voice mail system.  This new system has also allowed us to extend the coverage time for technicians answering the phone by an additional 30 minutes at the start and end of each workday.

A major upgrade of the common incident management system is scheduled for summer 2020.  In addition to minor bug fixes, this new version provides additional reporting capabilities, and a more intuitive interface for end users to enter and track helpdesk tickets.  As a result of the previous upgrade, we are now better positioned for subsequent upgrades, which will require fewer IT resources and shorter downtimes.  The next upgrade, planned for the 4^th quarter of 2020, emphasizes the technician interface, bringing greater flexibility for the IT support groups to make customizations specific to their operations.  

Help Desk Statistics, FY 2020

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

During the reporting period, the common communications infrastructure was expanded with the extensive use of Microsoft Office 365, WebEx, Zoom, and Blackboard Collaborate, and WebEx Teams, which allows audio calling from computing devices.  The availability of a portfolio of tools allowed students and employees an opportunity to select the one(s) that they were most familiar with and that would best meet their needs.  The expansion of the communications infrastructure and the availability of options within this infrastructure has been well received, as evidenced by the dispersed usage of all of these tools.

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)

From FY 2017-2021, build-out the identity management infrastructure to maximize user access to systems through the use of a single set of credentials. 

A major IT accomplishment has occurred with the implementation and use of a common ID across the University.  This was THE key IT request in the first UMB Strategic Plan. Today, UMB faculty, staff, and affiliates, as well as students are using a common ID, such that their Userids and Passwords are linked and automatically synchronizing across the University.  This means that only one Userid/Password is needed for faculty, staff and students to get access to UMID applications, email, and computer workstations. 

During the reporting period, there were 17 additional systems implemented at UMB that were configured to use the UMID and single sign-on capability. 

Percent Complete:

Completed/Milestone Achieved (100%)