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| ISC Progress Report
Welcome to spring!
COVID-19 Response
The speed at which the University moved remote has been nothing short of astonishing, with Penn's IT community acting as one collaborative team. Here are some of the actions ISC has taken to support Penn:
- Coordinated closely with Schools and Centers to prepare students, faculty, and staff for remote learning.
- Created the Student Remote IT Support and Remote Work Tools & Guidelines webpages, which have garnered thousands of views.
- Renegotiated contracts to expand access to critical remote tools like Teams, Zoom, Panopto, Adobe Suite, and PennO365.
- Integrated Canvas with Zoom.
- Launched University Client VPN service that provides encrypted access to PennNet.
- Prepared our Virtual Desktop Service for increased use around campus.
- Extended hours of coverage for the Tech Center and PennKey support.
- Expanded HireIT service hours to help clients prepare for remote classes.
- Built a campus IT call center utilizing ModSquad for after-hours and overflow support.
- Established Student Health Services Call Center.
- Configured PennNet Phone to support call forwarding and voicemail to phone.
- Extended PennO365 and Penn+Box accounts for graduating students until the end of the calendar year.
- Extended LinkedIn Learning access to postdocs and student workers.
- Created a COVID-19 flag in BusinessObjects, a query tool used to provide access to the University's Data Warehouse.
Amidst COVID-19, ISC is still focused on
our five Strategic Goals and related projects:
Deliver high-quality services:
Next Generation Unified Communications: ISC has selected Vonage as the Next Generation Unified Communications cloud provider for its new service: PennFlex Phone. PennFlex Phone will continue to provide Penn users with the same high-quality service they’ve come to expect from PennNet Phone, while offering optional enhanced features and functionality, including a mobile and desktop app with messaging and audio/video conferencing. Phone numbers will migrate from PennNet Phone to PennFlex Phone in phases through June 30, 2022. The service is now offering early access to the PennFlex Phone App in response to COVID-19. In addition, Schools and Centers with users who are willing to opt out of the physical phone on their desk can migrate their Penn phone numbers beginning in July.
PennERA: A significant upgrade to Penn’s Electronic Research Administration system was successfully completed on April 19. The upgrade was required to effectively respond to current and future business needs, and brings improved functionality to users. Enhancements include an updated user interface, a new user access and routing assignment module, and an improved Proposal Development budget tool. For more information, please visit the newly redesigned PennERA website.
Online Accessibility: Penn is working with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on efforts to make campus websites and applications more accessible for persons with disabilities. Since January, the Web Accessibility project team has assembled a web entity database that actively monitors 473 websites and applications for accessibility issues via the Pope Tech automated tool. Multiple avenues are newly available for providing guidance and support: a dedicated Slack channel, regular weekly office hours, service catalog offerings, and an upcoming relaunch of the central Accessibility site. Along with in-person meetings and presentations, these avenues have allowed the team to identify campus-wide needs and offer tailored remediation or support plans based on a group’s bandwidth, priorities, and technical understanding. The team will also be working to evaluate and improve the accessibility of other applications and courseware prior to Penn's August OCR agreement deadline.
Protect Penn:
Network Segmentation: The core network routing upgrades we completed in January have greatly enhanced our ability to logically divide Penn’s network to enhance the security of critical systems. The proposed network segmentation architecture will look to create a secure enclave for managed devices being used by credentialed Penn people, as well as acknowledging devices that are suspect, and better managing guest users.
CrowdStrike: CrowdStrike is an endpoint detection and response tool that provides Penn with improved capabilities to prevent, identify, and analyze malicious activity on devices. After success in an initial pilot deployment, CrowdStrike is being made available to Schools and Centers for no additional cost. Our contract negotiations are drawing to a close and we have kicked off our campus rollout process.
Identity & Access Management Program: Please see our latest update regarding Internal IAM project developments, steps to IAM product purchase, and what’s next.
Anticipate future change:
Next Generation Student Systems (NGSS): On March 19th, the NGSS project announced the decision to delay the deployment of the new Pennant systems by one year. Release 1 will now go live in August 2021, and Release 2 will go live in March 2022. Through this revised approach, the team can capitalize on existing project momentum while mitigating the extraordinary risk of hastily implementing a complex set of systems during these uncertain times. The added time will also allow for more user testing and training, which will better equip staff and faculty to assist students. The current project priorities include progressing Release 1 System Integration Testing (SIT) and completing the Release 2 planning activities, conversion design, and configuration. The project team continues to work with its partners and stakeholders with an appropriate level of engagement, adapting as necessary to fluctuating COVID-19 circumstances.
Workday@Penn: Penn continues to expand its new human resources and financials platform. The Workday Mobile App was introduced at a January 31st town hall; February and March saw an average of 1,200 mobile app users per month. A new visualization tool for security role assignments now enables security administrators to manage their organizations more efficiently. Electronic W-2s for 2019 were made available in Workday. Workday’s first open enrollment and merit processes for eligible faculty and staff, for FY21, are underway this spring. Workday also delivered the first of two semi-annual releases on March 7. Enhancements include improved worker search results in Task and Report; Workday-generated email notifications now link directly to the actionable item; an expanded view of payslips, both in the PDF format and in the mobile app; and finally, the gradual rollout of a series of configuration changes in staff recruiting.
Exercise fiscal stewardship:
COVID-19 Response: The University expects to see reduced revenue in FY20 and FY21. In response, we are implementing financial mitigation efforts, including a hiring freeze, minimal merit pool, and reduced contractors and capital projects. In addition, ISC received funding for three new projects: Next Generation Unified Communications, PennPath (External Identity & Access Management) and Crowdstrike (endpoint detection & response).
Recruit, retain & develop:
New HR Director for ISC: We are pleased to welcome Kim Stott, PhD, as our new Director of Human Resources. Kim is developing a new strategic program to address employee optimization and engagement, management and leadership development, training, recruitment, and HR policies and procedures.
Thank you for your partnership!
The ISC Leadership Team
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