Approved Ideas for 2010

Signage (I would like to see a sign placed over each major entrance to each building indicating the name of the building.)

A campus-wide way-finding signage system has been developed and is in the process of being implemented. This system is intended to guide visitors from the main access ways, for example from I-35 to the nearest parking garages. From the parking garages, pedestrians are guided via map pedestal signs and pedestrian blade signs to their final building destination.

Building ID signs are part of the overall way-finding system, and as funding becomes available those ID signs and in some instances building name lettering over the main entrances will become part of the signage system.

Include More Healthy Choice Items In Vending Machines On Campus

Parking and Transportation and Housing and Food Services currently are overseeing a Request for Proposals for vending machines on campus. One of the priorities we have identified is healthy choices being available in vending machines

Post signs in buildings with emergency contact number for repairs, etc.

Facilities Services is obtaining material and labor estimates for implementing contact signage for building problems during and after business hours. During regular business hours, report restroom equipment malfunctions to the building manager. After hours, call 471-2020 to report.

Change policy on promoting Assistant Instructors

The Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies, Victoria Rodríguez, has discussed this matter with Human Resources, and agrees that this policy no longer benefits graduate students. The Graduate School is in the process of working through the appropriate channels to eliminate this policy, thus providing more flexibility to students and departments in appointing graduate students to TA or AI positions.

Stream Lectures on Internet

The Research and Educational Technology (R&E) committee of IT governance is charged with providing leadership for the University's research capabilities, learning management system, teaching and collaboration tools, and classroom technology tools. An upcoming agenda item the committee will be working on is determining the best practices for capturing and broadcasting lectures. The College of Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services and the College of Communication Technology Services offer information via their websites about what is currently in place for streaming lectures and classes online.

Centralized Business Offices

Using no new or additional monies, the Office of the Controller, led by Associate Vice President and Controller Fred Friedrich, will optimize routine functions such as purchasing, accounting, and payroll. The administrative staff from ITS who were previously performing such work are being shifted to the Central Business Office. By reducing ITS's investment in office space, technology, and resources dedicated to managing routine business transactions, UT will achieve cost savings, improved efficiencies, and better service.

If we realize quantifiable success in this endeavor, this option will be made available to other units, including colleges and academic departments units.

Book exchange for Staff Educational Benefit

UT Human Resource Services will provide a web resource to facilitate implementing this idea, allowing individuals to list books needed or available to borrow.

Discounts for Campus Events

Human Resource Services (HRS) administers the Employee Discount Web site. Periodically, we survey area vendors to determine if they would like to offer discounts to UT faculty and staff. In future updates, HRS will also contact deans and vice presidents of UT to determine if they would consider listing faculty and staff discounts to the events and/or products they offer.

Professional development should be encouraged for all

HRS will review policy to ensure that policy provisions support salient elements of this idea. Furthermore, HRS will make a concerted effort to communicate the value of professional development, as expressed in this idea, on a regular basis.

Reward Staff with Vacation Time

Staff may be rewarded with vacation time at any time during a year in which a supervisor would like to recognize their exemplary performance. Supervisors may recommend an employee receive up to 32 hours per year of exemplary service leave time. All awards are made in eight hour increments.

To nominate an employee, supervisors should complete the Exemplary Service Award nomination form available on the HRS website. They must describe the outstanding performance and supply a copy of the employee's most recent performance appraisal. The nomination must be approved by the department head. The documents are then forwarded to Human Resources and the Office of the President for approval.

In 2009, about 1,400 hours were awarded at an average of 16 hours each. Rewarding outstanding performance with vacation time is a constructive practice, and UT will continue to support this policy.

UT Support for the DREAM Act

"Under Texas law, undocumented students in Texas who meet certain residency requirements are granted in-state tuition at state universities. If Texas educates these young people, it should provide them with access to legal employment. At UT, we support the goal of our graduates having the opportunity to put their education to work on behalf of our state and our nation." President Bill Powers

Institute recognition programs for student employees

Student Employee of the Year Award nominations opened December 1 ends January 28. The award will be presented in April 2011. Sponsored by the Texas Exes and HRS. The first winner of the Student Employee of the Year Award will also be entered into a national competition (National Student Employment Week (April 10-16, 2011).

Default profiles to print double sided

The decentralized way in which printers are managed on our campus makes it impossible to require duplex printing as a matter of policy. Individual schools and units have differing needs, and while duplex printing can indeed save on paper costs it is not the best option in all cases.

Information Technology Services (ITS) has made a commitment to support duplex printing in the computer labs it manages. Not all of the existing printers support duplex printing, but as the current fleet's lifecycle expires, we will ensure that all new printers support full duplex capabilities. Once this is in place, ITS will make duplex printing the default option in our labs.

Additional possibilities include departments and units agreeing to print duplex and having systems configured so duplex is the default setting. You can also configure your own computer so that it defaults to double-side printing. If you need assistance in doing this, please contact the ITS Help Desk online at http://www.utexas.edu/its/helpdesk or at 512-475-9400.

Technology Recycling and Disposal

Information Technology Services (ITS) offers the hard drive destruction service which provides demolition of old, unused university computer hard drives that may contain sensitive Category-I data. By working with a certified, local third party vendor who has a "zero waste" policy, ITS ensures that 100% of the destroyed media is recycled appropriately and that toxic substances are handled according to Environmental Protection Agency regulations and are re-used. To learn more go to the Hard Drive Destruction website: http://www.utexas.edu/its/hddestruct/

Other units on campus also provide information and services related to technology recycling and disposal:

• The Office of Sustainability, which is part of the Campus Planning and Facilities Management portfolio within University Operations, supports and promotes both existing and new collaborations on campus pursing sustainability: http://www.utexas.edu/operations/sustainability/
• The Environmental Science Institute, a multi-disciplinary institute focusing on scientific research in environmental studies, offers a number of links on its website to other sustainability centers and resources on campus: http://www.esi.utexas.edu/sustainability/index.html
• In celebration of Earth Day 2010, the Student Engineering Council teamed up with Goodwill Industries' Computer Works to hold an Austin-wide electronic waste (e-waste) drive to collect disposal electronics and electronic parts that cannot be disposed of through standard methods. Contact the council to see if they have similar plans for 2011: http://sec.engr.utexas.edu/

(Eliminate) Data Output Excesses

Using Green Output allows you to cut your paper printing costs by printing mainframe reports to .txt, .pdf, .xls, or .csv files instead of printing on paper. Reports can be sent to WebSpace accounts, as well as to both personal and bulk mount Austin Disk accounts. Sending Green Output to bulk mount shares on Austin Disk means that anyone who has access to the bulk mount will have access to the output. Groups of users can easily access the mainframe reports that reside in a secure central location.

Learn more about Green Output and eliminate your paper printing costs: http://www.utexas.edu/its/green-output/

Link Blackboard and UT secure access and Universal UTEID Login - Full Integration

ITS is currently investigating solutions for an improved centralized EID authentication service that would be able to incorporate more campus systems (like Blackboard) into a seamless EID single sign-on environment. The CASA (Centralized Authentication System Assessment) project has been chartered to develop a set of requirements for an enterprise authentication service and evaluate products that can address these requirements. The CASA project has a customer steering committee that includes representatives from a cross-section of campus units.

Un-silo software licensing

This idea is in the process of being implemented. In response to several requests from campus, ITS is partnering with Procurement and Payment Services to identify new ways to better leverage the university's buying power and simplify the end user's acquisition of the software they need to complete their work. Since this time, we've negotiated fantastic pricing for Filemaker products ( https://techstaff.utexas.edu/forums/techforum/viewthread/156 ) and are in the early stages of working with VMware and Adobe to identify similar opportunities. Other software vendors of interest include Apple, Mathworks, and SPSS (IBM).

Assign ITS Staff Liaisons to Colleges

Beginning this fall 2010, Information Technology Services (ITS) will be assigning liaisons to the colleges and schools as part of our commitment to improving customer service. The idea of providing a dedicated resource aligns with much of what we have heard from our customers. ITS liaisons will indeed get to know the individual needs of customer units, be pro-active in suggesting technology solutions and will look for ways to coordinate and collaborate with what others across campus are doing as well. More details will be provided at https://www.utexas.edu/its/news/ as they become available.

Away from the office message (for mail.utexas.edu accounts)

Adding an "Out of Office" or auto-reply feature to UMBS (mail.utexas.edu) would be technically possible. Because UMBS is a locally built system, adding additional functionality to it would require the availability and effort of on-staff developers.

The University is currently conducting a project to review the e-mail services that are offered primarily for student use. (UMBS falls into this category.) Details on this project may be found here: https://www.utexas.edu/its/email/ .

At this point, it may be most prudent to wait for a decision from the RFP process before committing University resources to enhancing a potentially obsolete system.

As a workaround, e-mail from UMBS can be forwarded to another e-mail system that already supports "Out of Office" messages. One such system is AEMS ( http://www.utexas.edu/its/messaging/index.php ), which is available to all faculty and staff at no cost.

For assistance with setting up an AEMS account or forwarding e-mail from UMBS, please fell free to contact the ITS Help Desk at 512-475-9400 or http://www.utexas.edu/its/helpdesk/ .

Combine the COLA course description database and course syllabi database

Recently implemented tools in Liberal Arts already subsume this idea. In the next few months a new release of these tools will bring further improvement beyond that suggested.

Automate Hourly Timesheet and Payroll Process

This idea will be included in the upcoming phase of Human Resource Management System (HRMS) once resources have been identified and committed to start the project.

Webcasting of all staff training through HR

HRS is exploring the use of webcasting as a channel to communicate a variety of information needed by individuals or departments.

Campus-wide Accessibility $$$ (save money on campus-wide video captioning)

ITS will follow-up with this idea by scheduling a meeting with UT Services for Students with Disabilities, the EEO Office, and DIIA (Center for Teaching and Learning). During this meeting ITS will recommend that we establish a central contract for captioning and brainstorm funding options.

Tuition Waiver for Teaching Assistants Should be Tax-Exempt

HRS has assigned this to the Student Employment Coordinator in Human Resource Services to coordinate with Payroll Services regarding the feasibility of this idea.

Cutting Edge IT Security

This idea is in the process of being fully implemented. While we aren't able to discuss the details of any on-going investigations, the university has invested heavily in information security infrastructure across the campus since 2005. In addition to building extensive intrusion detection and real-time network awareness capabilities, the university has been a leader in data exfiltration technology -- developing one of the first multi-platform data leak prevention tools based on a novel algorithm (SENF - http://www.utexas.edu/its/products/senf). This technology has since been ported to network-based intrusion detection devices and has been made available for external licensing ( http://www.otc.utexas.edu/ATdisplay.jsp?id=394&m=Comp). The university created was one of the first creators of a data exfiltration technology able to effectively operate on high-speed networks (e.g., 10Gigabits per second). The university has also developed an extensive risk assessment tool that helps to both classify data on every university system and address overall departmental risk for some 175 different campus units ( http://www.otc.utexas.edu/ATdisplay.jsp?id=459&m=Comp). In August 2009, the University renewed its commitment to information security by including it as one of the nine core initiatives in the Strategic Information Technology Advisory Committee's report on Information Technology ( http://www.utexas.edu/cio/sitac/initiatives.php). There are still opportunities for the university to improve information security (e.g., laptop encryption) and we are taking significant steps to significantly reduce the risk to the university's information resources and the constituents we serve.