ISC Progress Report, May 2017
Here’s a brief report on many of our major activities,
organized by our five strategic themes. Business Optimization, Harmonization & Transparency
IT Financial Management: Our Shared Services Team is focusing on four major workstreams:- IT Planning Task Force (ITPTF): Representatives from Schools and Centers meet monthly to review financials for centrally provided services and create equitable cost-sharing models. The ITPTF commissioned a sub-team to create guidelines on criteria for adding items to the Central Service Fee (CSF) bundle. Traditionally, the CSF was used to fund Network costs, and Network Planning Team members voted on what was included in this bundle. The sub-team is assessing the CSF as a vehicle for other shared investments beyond Networking.
- Billing Simplification: The IT Planning sub-team simplifies billing activity and supports consistency in charges for easy planning. A combined team of campus clients and ISC Finance is evaluating lowering administrative overhead, and reducing error rates and fluctuations in charges, by creating flat rates for telephones, fixed mainframe charges, and eliminating a non-billable class of wireless IPs.
- Deloitte Financial Study: ISC engaged Deloitte to create a comprehensive funds flow picture as well as assess invoicing procedures and opportunities. Deloitte completed their interview series with ISC and senior IT and financial clients, and is now analyzing ISC financials to produce recommendations for client billing and funding.
- Apptio: The PennO365 and BackUp services have been added to our Apptio automated service, project, and application costing tool. We continue to onboard clients from across campus.
Planview: We are on schedule to have all ISC staff reporting their time using Planview by July 1. Planview will ultimately improve costing and billing.
Slack: If you haven’t already joined the UPenn-IT Slack team, you can now self-register using your @upenn.edu email address here. This team is for all IT Staff at Penn and currently has more than 350 members.
Increase Value Through Differentiation & Innovation
Origin Retirement: ISC is migrating websites off the Origin server (origin.www.upenn.edu) to a more secure platform. If you have content hosted on the Origin server, please contact ISC Client Care (help@isc.upenn.edu) as soon as possible to start working with our Web Services team to transition your site.
Strengthen & Optimize IT @ Penn
Pennant: The Next Generation Student Systems (NGSS) project hosted a Town Hall meeting on April 27th which focused on completed milestones and functionality that will soon be available to system users. The team presented a preview of the Undergraduate Academic Catalog, which will be available early this summer. In addition to the Catalog, the team presented summary results of usability analyses of Penn InTouch, Advisor InTouch, and Courses InTouch, as well as user interviews and surveys conducted by a user-research and user-experience design firm. Human Capital Management: The Human Capital Management (HCM) program aims to increase Penn’s HR and Payroll work efficiency, enhance response to changes in regulatory and compliance issues, improve the user experience, and strengthen information quality and access. During Phase III we developed the proposed HCM Service Delivery Model, and chose a software solution to support our model.
Continuous Improvement
Continuous Improvement: ISC’s second Continuous Improvement cohort is completing their final lean six sigma training. Once complete, the cohort will focus their improvement efforts on service management and delivery.
Cloud First
Cloud First: Please see our latest update regarding lift and shift activities, Slack, new web content, and cloud-related sessions at the Penn IT Staff Convention.
Thank you for your ongoing support,
The ISC Leadership Team
