Current Initiatives

IT at Yale is actively advancing the following initiatives for FY23, 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, which takes a strategic approach from identifying emerging trends and university needs, to collaborative conversations with stakeholders across each pillar, to selecting projects to recommend for funding each fiscal year.

Pillars

Academic

Improvements focused on productivity and efficiency enhancements.

Classroom Technology

Improves the functional capabilities of lecture hall and classroom technology.

Key areas of focus:

  • Upgrade features for lecture halls and other specified classrooms.
  • Evolve standards for audio and video technology that support teaching and learning throughout the campus.
  • Provide recommendations to intake, fund, prioritize, and establish appropriate support models to improve teaching and learning.

Graduate Student Funding

Supports the ongoing development of the Graduate Student Funding (GSF) process, which replaced the Graduate Student Payment System (GSPS) in July 2022 with Banner, Workday, and a new data warehouse and data mart.

Key areas of focus:

  • Ensure post go-live support.
  • Complete data mart and reporting capabilities for new processes.
  • Complete analysis for the replacement of the custom Teaching Fellows System.

Student Information Systems (SIS) Programs

Addresses, over the course of multiple years (starting in FY17), university and government mandated changes, the technical cliffs that have the potential to jeopardize Yale’s student information system, and the backlogged demand for new functionality and improvements to existing outdated functionality.

Key areas of focus:

  • Deploy the Early Registration process for the Graduate School.
  • Complete the implementation of Banner 9 SSB.
  • Complete the requirements and design for the standard use of Banner.
  • Satisfy increased demand for paperless forms.

Administrative

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

Egencia Replacement

Implements a solution offering high quality, cost-effective customer experience when booking domestic and international travel for the Yale community.

Key areas of focus:
Identify the ideal solution that provides a wide range of travel management services and has the capacity and capability to handle large corporate accounts.

Hyland OnBase Implementation

Supports the implementation of Hyland’s OnBase Content Services Platform, focusing on document management, contract management, and incorporating integrations with applications such as Adobe Sign, Workday, etc.

Key areas of focus:

  • Simplify, streamline, and standardize operating procedures supported by better reporting and analytics. Create a more connected and unified finance function campus wide.
  • Improve central monitoring for quality and controls.
  • Enhance training and development of financial professionals’ campus wide.
  • Strengthen a culture of integrity and accountability among faculty and staff.

Clinical

Campus Health Systems

Introduces a new university program to develop and maintain a campus health infrastructure that will allow the university to protect its core mission while maintaining the health and productivity of its community in the face of routine and emergent health risks.

Key areas of focus:

  • Build on lessons from COVID by improving basic data infrastructure.
  • Serve as a trusted voice for campus public health issues.
  • Provide focused planning and systems to mitigate future risks.

Cultural Heritage

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

Improving Access to Yale’s Collections

Brings together the collections of Yale’s main collecting organizations (Yale Center for British Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and the Yale University Library) through a single web interface (named LUX: Yale Collections Discovery) to allow for search and discovery across 15+ million object records.

Key areas of focus:

  • Publicly launch and adopt the LUX platform.
  • Improve the LUX back-end technology and make improvements to front-end components.
  • Support the transition from project to service.
  • Support efforts towards teaching with collections.

Foundational

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

Assetworks

Supports the migration from FAMIS (Yale’s current facilities management system) to AssetWorks, an integrated workforce management system used by over 60 colleges and universities nationwide.

Key areas of focus:
Migrate historical data from Oracle to another database solution for retention and reference.

Mass Communication System Assessment

Assesses Yale’s mass communication system and determines its future direction and strategy.

Key areas of focus:

  • Create a vendor RFI and RFP.
  • Select a vendor to complete the implementation.
  • Partner with the vendor to develop a high-level design of the recommended solution.
  • Receive a refined cost estimate for the implementation.
  • Repair or address any emergency situations arising during the project and seek additional funding depending on the need.
  • Identify ways to support the operational model, lifecycle, and ongoing cost of the recommended solution.

Next Generation Network (NGN)

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 strong protection for high-risk use and allowing increased freedom for lower-risk use.

Key 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-building network infrastructure and intra-building network infrastructure.
  • Transition 24 Buildings to NGN, requiring NGN advanced prep work.

Related area of focus: NGN Advanced Prep Work

  • Conduct NGN build discovery and advanced preparation work, including follow-up work in the building transition stage related to IP Address Remediation and NGN Closet preparations.
  • Support early transition of identified and agreed upon systems (e.g., printers, possibly phones/faxes, specialized systems e.g., call centers).
  • Support owners of specialized systems to set-up and coordinate testing before the NGN transition.

Related area of focus: NGN Closet Surveys and Remediation

  • Define FY23 closets that will house NGN equipment and require remediation to meet minimum NGN equipment and security needs.
  • Complete the remediation of 131 Buildings following this assessment.

Public Safety Data Center Migration

Reviews findings from a GAP analysis to ensure that Yale is compliant with law enforcement standards and is achieving desired performance levels.

Key areas of focus:

  • Develop an approach to remediate and redesign Yale’s Public Safety Data Center.
  • Complete Yale Police Department hardware installation and configuration, including requirements from the GAP Analysis.
  • Migrate the remaining five applications to the ITS Data Center.
  • Complete the FY22 incident recovery effort to fully migrate to an improved system.

Radio Communication System Replacement

Replaces the Radio Communication system used by Public Safety and ITS in the offices of the Fire Marshal, Emergency Management, Cultural Properties, and Environmental Health and Safety spanning 3-years, which will also form the foundation to assimilate all university radio users into a single system.

Key areas of focus:
Upgrade to a new, compliant radio system.

Telestaff and Workday Integration

Integrates Telestaff and Workday to eliminate manual, redundant, and error-prone work for scheduling and timekeeping of Police Officers and Security Officers.

Fit for Purpose Computing

Puts analysis from Fit for Purpose Computing at Yale (completed in FY’22) into action.

Key areas of focus:

  • Completely overhaul Yale’s managed desktop offering, providing the community a flexible, reliable, and secure computing platform.
  • Enhance Faculty, Staff, and Students user experience by providing a virtual desktop offering (MyApps at Yale).
  • Implement Hardware Asset Management, providing the community with guidance around procurement, tracking, replacing, and disposing of desktops, laptops, and workstations.

YaleSites Upgrade Program

Upgrades YaleSites, Yale’s web-publishing service, from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. The initiative, which will provide a more supported, secure, and accessible CMS, is co-led by Yale ITS and the Office of Public Affairs and Communications.

Key areas of focus:

  • Rebuild identified key proof of concept (POC) websites, including YaleSites and Yale Identity with the potential of a third POC departmental site as needed to test the platform, components and processes.
  • Add new components and features, and implement new tools, as needed, to support the platform, including SEO Tools for website analytics.
  • Complete the platform build and test.
  • Communicate with and train the Yale Community and formally launch the platform.
  • Plan and begin migrating other YaleSites websites currently on older platform, leveraging the newly created YaleSites Fellowship Program.

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 common 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.

Award Set Up Process

Ensures that licensing of third-party robotic process automation (RPA) software is implemented across the Integrated Research Enterprise Solution (IRES)/InfoEd application and Workday applications.

Datamart: Research Enterprise Data and Reporting

Continues ongoing efforts to provide a self-service data and reporting model for access to research administration data.

Areas of focus:

  • Expands the Research Enterprise data mart to include an integrated solution for IRES and Workday financial data.
  • Incorporates compliance data from Yale’s Integrated Research Enterprise Solution (IRES).

Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Integrator

Migrates the current EHS platform to a new technology platform.

Key areas of focus:

  • Migrate the data access layer to a technology that supports the modern platform.
  • Implement a new User Interface (UI) framework.
  • Continue implementing .Net framework forms migration.
  • Create a solution for Restricted Items purchasing.

Intensive In-Home Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Services (IICAPS) Replacement

Completes analysis and requirements documentation, in preparation for a technology replacement for the current IICAPS application used by the Child Study Center.

Research Computing FY23

Stabilizes platforms supporting the advanced computing needs of the research community.

University Research Cores Software Implementation

Implements a research cores management software solution that is scalable for all Yale research cores, integrates with all necessary Yale IT systems such as Workday, TMS, CAS/SSO, and provides an API for future integrations.