IT at Yale has identified the following initiatives for fiscal year 2021, organized by governance committee pillars, including: academic, administrative, cultural heritage, foundational, and research.
Contents
Academic
Student Information Systems (SIS)
This multi-year effort aims to stablize and improve Yale’s student information system (SIS), by increasing sustainability and improving adoption of academic administration at Yale College, the Graduate School, and all Professional Schools. The project addresses remaining technical cliffs jeopardizing SIS functionality, simplifies and standardizes Yale-specific processes, addresses regulatory and institutional mandates, and implements functional enhancements.
Administrative
Alumni Affairs and Development (AAD) Campaign Technology
Now in its third year, the AAD Campaign Technology project is preparing for a public launch of the capital campaign. In addition to propeling giving to new levels, it supports the ability to share data across different domains to activate historically underrepresented segments and build future leadership. It also establishes the necessary infrastructure to support an influx of volunteers and staff, as well as donors and alumni engagement opportunities.
Datamart
Enhanced Financial Reporting
As part of ongoing improvements to the Datamart, work will continue to meet strategic financial reporting needs around compliance, regulatory, and federal and state reporting requirements. This project includes the warranty for Phase II.
RE Data and Reporting
Additional improvements to the Datamart include expanding the existing RE Datamart to include additional data sets, to allow for enhanced and consolidated reporting. In this effort, outdated existing reporting in Tableau and BRIO will be retired in favor of using the PowerBI platform.
ePay: eCommerce
This project will reduce the administrative burden of managing approximately 250 Merchant Identification Numbers (MIDs). By streamlining MIDs and processing, departments will no longer manage the selection and operation of MIDs independently and we will be better equipped to comply with PCI Level 2 requirements in FY21.
Time Tracking: Kronos Replacement
This effort involves replacing Kronos with Workday Time Tracking and Absence Management, and installing new time clocks. Upon completion, Yale will be able to use one application to collect, process, and manage time, absence, and leaves for staff and casual workers; to enable access control within one system; and support an increasingly mobile workforce.
Cultural Heritage
Improving Access to Yale Collections
Foundational
Active Directory (AD) Improvement
This project improves the security of Yale’s AD infrastructure to ensure its integrity is maintained; therefore, reducing institutional risk and aligning Yale with industry best practices. This work includes AD Application and Physical Hardening, Privileged Access Cleanup, AD Trust Re-architecture, AD Logging, and protocol cleanup.
Enterprise Monitoring and Automation
Enterprice Monitoring and Automation improves infrastructure operations and availability monitoring for key service components by developing shared practices in tooling, data acquisition, data filtering, data correlation, alerting, reporting, data access, and user experience. Utilizing advanced monitoring and automation tools results in improved visibility, response, and service restoration times.
FAMIS
Yale’s current Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system supports work order creation with billing and cost distribution, space tracking, preventive maintenance programs, invoice and purchasing approvals, inventory and material tracking, call center disposition, mobile application, key tracking, reporting, and more. This project moves Yale to new technology with modern support levels, current browser compatibility, workflow, and reduced security risk.
LLCI PBX Replacement
This replacement eliminates dependency on the University’s aged telephone infrastructure, reclaims valuable data center space, and deploys consistent and modern telephony services throughout the campus. The project begins assessing line usage to determine the migration timing off of the aged Avaya PBX system.
Next Generation Network (NGN)
Yale’s network environment has grown organically to its vast current state. A large number of services made available on our network require different security access levels currently unavailable in our network setup. In FY21, the team will deploy a new core NGN network to support both wired and wireless connections, implement virtual networks, deploy 3 pilot locations, and prepare for building transitions. Learn more about the Next Generation Network, including the following project facets:
- Advanced Security Features
- Advanced Preparation Work
- Building Transition
- Closet Surveys and Remediation
- Network Visibility and Logging
Public Safety Data Center Assessment
Schwarzman Center Digital Commons
Scope has been revised for this project, given the delay of opening the actual building until next fall, and includes building a website platform to include the student media pipeline and other features to support digital programming. Based on the launch, enhancements will be identified and prioritized to continue refinement and expansion of the center’s web presence.
Research
Research Computing
This project refreshes the Grace HPC cluster infrastructure and includes additonal accelerators to support machine learning techniques. It also provides the infrastructure needed to support disciplines requiring large memory spaces for disciplines that require loading large volumes of data in memory to process (E.g. Statistics & Data Science, Neuroscience, Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry and Chemistry).
Research Data Center
Research Data Center will refresh/replace end-of-life enclosures for HPC equipment in the West Campus Data Center with newer hardware that can accommodate an increased hardware density. Funding will refresh 1 POD and add cooling capacity the handle the increased heat load of the computer technology. This effort will also refresh existing power infrastructure with modern hardware to deliver more power to the racks.
Research Storage
This project provides for acquisition of highly flexible, lower cost-per-terabyte storage infrastructure for storing data that is not in active use for ongoing computations. As compared to standard high performance HPC cluster storage, this has lower performance, but its flexibility will facilitate expansion over time in smaller increments and compared to backup storage, this has higher performance and is more readily accessed. Primary users will include cryoEM, astrophysics, and data science.