Current Initiatives

IT at Yale is actively advancing the following initiatives for FY25, selected as the technology projects providing the most value in support of Yale’s mission, with oversight and guidance by the IT Governance Committee. The list below is the culmination of the IT annual planning process. IT takes a strategic approach from identifying emerging trends and university needs, hosting collaborative conversations with stakeholders across each pillar, and selecting projects to recommend for funding each fiscal year.

Pillars

Academic

Improvements focused on productivity and efficiency enhancements.

Academic Appointment Process Optimization

Revolutionizes and streamlines Yale University’s academic appointment procedure by introducing automated workflows, delegated authority matrixes, and improved processes.

Areas of focus:

  • Improve transparency and communication within academic appointment procedures.
  • Streamline compensation management.
  • Optimize resource allocation.
  • Enhance the technical aspects of academic appointment procedures by introducing technology solutions like workflow automation with in-line attachments and designing a robust security model for document visibility.

International Students Scholars Case Management

Implements a new case management system to maintain and process more than 7,000 active immigration records for Yale’s international students and scholars.

Areas of focus:

  • Provide a reliable customer service platform that avoids potential issues with immigration compliance.
  • Build a user-friendly system for international students, schools, and campus partners who use it to request visa sponsorship.
  • Build a system with built-in functionality to create electronic forms, improving and streamlining processes and services, including running reports for federal compliance.

Non-Degree Learner Management System

Builds a learner management system to offer professional schools a streamlined, integrated solution for managing non-degree learners.

Areas of focus:

  • Build a workflow for managing learners who are compliant with existing and emerging regulations and provide a holistic view of this audience across Yale.
  • Update processes overseeing the full lifecycle of a non-degree learner from the time they are a prospective learner through their successful completion of a program and receipt of a digital credential.
  • Provide marketing management, communications, record keeping, payments, digital credentials, and completion-status tracking.

Student Accounts Receivable

Analyzes and documents the current Accounts Receivable (AR) practices utilizing Banner and other integrations to identify custom code, evaluate if it is needed in the future, and address any additional gaps and improvements.

Areas of focus:

  • Inform the Bursar’s Office, Information Technology, and downstream stakeholders such as the Financial Aid, Registrar, Controller, and Financial Reporting Offices about how to address federal compliance gaps.
  • Reduce manual effort and financial errors, and save processing time.
  • Improve customer service for students and parents.
  • Improve financial reporting related to Student Accounts Receivables (AR) by building new reports and dashboards.

Student Housing

Assesses current Yale College student housing processes and the use of to support future state processes.

Areas of focus:

  • Conduct a detailed analysis of current processes and workflows used by the Yale Housing unit in support of Yale College student housing, Summer Program Housing, and Graduate Housing.
  • Identify and focus on those areas that will benefit from implementing efficiency and optimization improvements for Yale College housing processes along with key roles needed to support the newly reconfigured Yale College and Yale College Housing organizations.
  • Create and communicate a series of end-user, system administrator, and power user-type documentation with various audiences.
  • Implement and automate key reports and metrics and deliver critical integrations further to enhance the security and use of the StarRez platform.

University Financial Aid

Consists of an analysis of the varying systems and processes across the University’s Financial Aid offices.

Areas of focus:

  • Conduct a detailed analysis of current processes and policies within Financial Aid to determine where updates are needed.
  • Complete the requirements gathering and design phases for using Banner’s common functions, including reports and population selections.
  • Recommend integrations with additional technology to address gaps.

Institutional Training Grants Hub

Centralizes data and information used for training grant applications for government agencies. Systems updates will expand automation and formats to initiate the adoption of training grants for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, School of Nursing, and School of Public Health.

  • Create and communicate a series of end-user, system administrator, and power user-type documentation with various audiences.
  • Implement and automate key reports and metrics and deliver critical integrations to enhance the platform’s security and use.

Administrative

Elimination of non-value-added tasks to increase service quality and system reliability.

Administrative Data at Yale

Strengthens informed decision-making processes by improving access to quality data and analytics, advancing data literacy, and expanding data governance.

Areas of focus:

  • Improve processes for prioritizing data needs and making data available, understood, and usable to identify insights.
  • Expand the Common Data Repository with priority data, create new data models and analytics, and evaluate local package solutions such as Argo Student Operational reporting, where warranted.
  • Implement processes to improve data quality.
  • Improve data literacy by working with units to identify key skills needed and address gaps.

Facilities Project System Replacement

Develops a secure, industry-standard solution containing the tools the Capital Project Management group needs to manage all construction projects effectively.

Areas of focus:

  • Integrate with Workday for vendor management and ease of collaboration.
  • Migrate existing work for in-flight projects to create system continuity
  • Improve the ability for contractors to access the application directly for change requests, bidding, and invoice submission.
  • Create mobile capabilities for ease of access.

Local 33 Graduate Student Workers Union

Supports people, process, and technology changes resulting from the contract negotiations between Yale and the newly formed Local 33 Graduate Student Workers union.

Areas of focus:

  • Evaluate, modify, and implement administrative processes related to wages, benefits, workplace, reporting, and classifications to support the new Local 33 Graduate Student Workers union.

Operations Notification

Assesses the implementation of a consolidated status dashboard to push targeted communications to communities affected by events impacting University facilities, including power outages, network outages, weather closures, and more.

Areas of focus:

  • Complete requirements gathering to identify key functionalities needed for a consolidated dashboard. FY25 will include designing, architecting, and developing a notifications dashboard to allow facilities to submit messages as part of an initial minimum viable product (MVP).

Yale Contract Management Program

Develops a tool that centralizes all existing agreements and contracts into a standardized and automated solution. This tool will maintain a secure platform for managing all contracts.

Areas of focus:

  • Drive standardization and consistency on how agreements and contracts are funneled through Yale and the Office of General Counsel.
  • Automate workflows to allow for increased and enhanced reporting.
  • Improve oversight and create greater visibility into contract management.

Clinical

Identity Access Management Federation

Targets technical enhancements to multiple platforms, core systems, and workstreams to improve service quality, security, access, safety, productivity, and efficiency.

Areas of focus:

  • Removes barriers to collaboration, simplifies the clinician and researcher user experience, facilitates the onboarding/offboarding of access rights to resources for employees and students and enhances Yale’s security posture.
  • Enhances user experience by introducing technical improvements that may range from small adjustments to current platforms or larger investments.
  • Saves time for clinicians and researchers.
  • Increases security measures for patients, researchers, and research subjects and decreases room for error.

Cultural Heritage

Increased preservation and reach of Yale’s cultural heritage collections.

Environmental Monitoring

Assesses the aggregation of environmental monitoring data to improve collection storage, display conditions, and optimize energy use.

Areas of focus:

  • Assess collection monitoring practices and define requirements.
  • Research monitoring equipment, tools, and data production.
  • Develop and test proof of concept sensors and align sensor data with CMS data.
  • Deliver recommendations for future work.

Integrating Cultural Contexts

Integrates additional cultural heritage collections into the University’s newly launched LUX platform.

Areas of focus:

  • Integrate new data into LUX.
  • Improve the LUX back-end technology and make improvements to front-end components.
  • Integrate new and existing services within the LUX front-end.
  • Instigate a robust program of user assessment to understand priorities for system improvement and new development

Library Services Platform

Modernizes essential library systems and enhances the ability to manage and deliver resources more efficiently.

Areas of focus:

  • Merge the Yale University Libraries with the Yale Law Library to take advantage of commonalities and unify library user experiences.
  • Reduce technical barriers to service delivery through Alma’s modern platform.
  • Facilitate stewardship of human and material resources.

Foundational

Deep investment intended to mitigate risks and stabilize Yale’s network.

Distributed Antenna System

Creates a Centralized Campus Cellular Hub to enhance the infrastructure’s reliability and efficiency. This scalable, multi-carrier design allows Yale to include buildings in a standard way that avoids the need for new contractual, design, and implementation work for every construction project or new building.

Flexible Computing at Yale

Standardizes the configuration and management of computing devices and applications across constituent groups, including students, faculty, and on/off-campus staff.

Areas of focus:

  • Develop a streamlined method for evaluating, configuring, and purchasing endpoint devices.
  • Update the methods and value proposition to facilitate users’ movement between physical and virtual computing environments.
  • Implement modern methods to manage endpoints that balance user responsiveness and the University’s security posture.

Next Generation Network

Delivers a more reliable and secure method of transmitting data, essential for faculty research, particularly in the growing areas of science and engineering. Includes a security model suitable for the openness required by a research institution, resulting in solid protection for high-risk use and allowing increased freedom for lower-risk use.

Areas of focus:

  • Advance network security features.
  • Address Yale-occupied buildings (owned and leased within New Haven metro-area campuses) and Yale’s safety network, cultural properties, facilities network, science network, select AV systems, PCI systems, and other ITS network infrastructures, as they are identified.
  • Develop inter- and intra-building network infrastructure.
  • Transition 60-90 Buildings to NGN, requiring NGN advanced prep work.

Police Dispatch & Records Conversion

Delivers a fully functional software system alongside and integrated with the New Haven Police Department to enhance the ability to share critical information across the two teams.

Radio Communication System Replacement

Replaces the Radio Communication system used by Public Safety and Information Technology Services (ITS) in the Offices of the Fire Marshal, Emergency Management, Cultural Properties, and Environmental Health and Safety spanning three years, and forming the foundation to assimilate all university radio users into a single system.

Areas of focus:

  • Replace the radio communications system with the P-25 system, the national standard for public safety communications systems.
  • Install FNE (Fixed Network) microwaves and antennas at five campus locations.
  • Install and configure the audio recording system. Program and distribute new subscriber units.

Service Portal and Software Catalog

Enhances the University’s software asset management practices by creating a central repository of information on software titles maintained in the University’s service delivery platform. Configures the platform to connect this data with data from existing University platforms (e.g., Workday, Kivuto).

Areas of focus:

  • Improve reporting and analytics to support software governance.
  • Create a University-wide, centralized software catalog (built on YaleSites) that leverages aggregated software data and serves as a single entry point for students, faculty, and staff to find and obtain available software titles.

Enabling AI

Implements foundational capabilities for AI that will enable individual use cases to leverage tools and processes to ensure consistency, reduced time to production, acceptance of common guidelines, and approval to meet privacy and information security requirements.

Areas of focus:

  • Develop services that enhance and continue to extend the ask.yale.edu chatbot to other services.
  • Develop applications to facilitate pedagogical delivery using AI.
  • Develop a secure, walled garden for research and administrative operational activities, including custom GPTs.
  • Increase efficiency and productivity, reducing repetitive tasks or questions compounded with enhanced decision-making and improved user experiences, making it easier to get to relevant information more quickly.

Information Security and Risk

Safeguard Yale’s Data and IT Systems.

Yale Information Security

Ensures that cyber threats don’t disrupt the delivery of Yale’s Mission and coordinates the university’s effort to safeguard Yale’s Data and IT Systems.

Ongoing areas of focus:

  • Identify, elevate, and track cybersecurity risks.
  • Operate several critical standard controls to help protect and detect potential cybersecurity incidents.
  • Establish security standards and guidelines to meet university and regulatory requirements.
  • Provide consultation and the cybersecurity information you need to know.

Research

Stabilization of platforms supporting the advanced computing needs of the research community and research administration.

Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Integrator

Migrates the current Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) platform to a modern and sustainable technology solution.

Areas of focus:

  • Complete migration to Microsoft Azure cloud service.
  • Upgrade the Windows Forms user interface (UI) to the new UI framework.
  • Create a solution for Restricted Items Purchasing.

Massachusetts Green High-Performance Computing

Enhances Yale’s high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities through the colocation of HPC equipment to a custom-built shared research computing facility. Transitions on-campus power to green hydroelectric sources, fostering research computing partnerships with other academic institutions through full membership in this regional consortium.

Areas of focus:

  • Create full and equal membership in the MGHPCC consortium, consisting of five Massachusetts members (Harvard, MIT, UMass, Boston University, and Northeastern).
  • Build out high-speed networking connectivity between Yale and MGHPCC and fully transition to MGHPCC from the current West Campus data center.
  • Transition from HPC investments at West Campus to MGHPCC (Workstream III), with transition defined as ramping up HPC compute and storage investments at MGHPCC and winding down HPC compute and storage at Yale’s West Campus.

Yale Ventures

Implements, over multiple years, a comprehensive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Intellectual Property (IP) database solution, leveraging the Salesforce platform.

BioMed Informatics

Centralizes infrastructure of tools, policies, and personnel to expand Yale’s data science and computing capabilities for internal researchers and collaborations with scientists from around the world. The infrastructure intends to be part of a larger university-wide resource to improve patient outcomes, train the next generation of biomedical informatics and data science experts, and accelerate the success of Yale researchers and clinicians.

Areas of focus:

  • Expand the Health System high-performance computing environment Computational Health Platform.
  • Introduce new Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
  • Expand self-service cloud computing options.
  • Build a new HIPAA-compliant system that will comply with non-federal and federal systems.