Enabling Objectives

• Make library, research, and administrative information readily available to authorized users.

  The VITAL© philosophy, created by the Apple Computer Corporation and expressed in the diagram below, will serve as a guiding design for the development and provision of information services.
  

The benefits derived from the use of information are a function of both its quality and availability. Resources will be focused on providing timely, transparent access to data at convenient geographical locations, on appropriate hardware platforms. Applications will be developed in the most effective and efficient manner, with due consideration to departmental and institutional needs, usage patterns, communications requirements, system maintenance, and costs. Knowledgeable workers, both data producers and information consumers, are the University's most valuable resource. The goal is to use technology to the utmost to facilitate their work.
• Provide orientation, training, and continuing support for users of the various hardware, software, and data systems supported by Information Systems.

  It is as important to orient and train users, and to provide them with on- going ("help desk") support, as it is to create and enhance applications. Ultimately, it is the users of systems who cause them to have value to the University. Therefore, Information Systems will continue to emphasize the provision of user services.

• Provide integrated, efficient, and functional communications (voice, data, and video) services to encourage and support information exchange both within and beyond the University community.

  Resources will continue to be focused upon providing the most efficient and effective communications systems for the academic and administrative needs of the Lexington Campus, the Medical Sector, and the Community Colleges. Emphasis will be placed on providing communications services that encourage and support open systems computing. The University-wide communications infrastructure (fiber, routers, concentrators, network software, etc.) will be managed centrally and coordinated in a manner that ensures compatibility and smooth flow among the various information resources of the University. Communications Systems will strive to ensure that faculty, staff and students have access to all appropriate state, regional, and national networks, for research, instruction, and distance learning.

• Ensure responsiveness to the needs and requirements of central computing systems and communications users.

  The existing University Computing Advisory Committee, composed of Instructional, Research, and Administrative Advisory Subcommittees, in addition to a Communications Advisory Committee, will continue to be the primary vehicle for general campus input to Information Systems in the process of planning, priority setting, and resource allocation. In addition, various specialized user groups will continue to function to advise Computing and Communications Services regarding particular applications and support functions.

• Identify accountability and University-wide support responsibility for managed information, in order to ensure data integrity, physical security, accuracy, and appropriate access to the information.

  University-wide information that is an institutional resource must be managed and coordinated centrally to prevent slipping into incompatible islands of automation, without communication and data sharing capabilities. Information Systems works with departments and institutional effectiveness officers to facilitate the coordination of departmental applications to avoid inconsistent and duplicative data.

• Provide an environment that will permit users to access and extract data from Institutional systems in order to meet the information management requirements of the University community.

  A subject-oriented, integrated, data access methodology, organized to support management needs will be designed and implemented, which will:

  • provide a single data access methodology for management information (thereby reducing the cost of reconciling conflicting information) and largely eliminate the need for duplicative ("shadow") systems

  • be structured to meet management support requirements and include summary information and historical data

  • reduce the cost of developing ad hoc reports for forecasting and trend analysis

• Encourage compatibility and consistency with institutional directions in phasing out older systems and phasing in new systems, by providing reasonable assistance in the conversion process.

  The University has a major investment in decentralized, multi-vendor computing resources. The investment in multi-vendor computing resources will continue to be supported, as resources permit. The goal of Information Systems is to assist in the migration of these applications to a client server technology.

  Large-scale, general purpose computing resources, centrally located and broadly accessible, will continue to be an important dimension of the University's computing strategy, especially for major administrative systems such as SIS, HRS, and FRS. However, such facilities will provide an increasingly smaller portion of the overall computation capabilities as reliance upon desktop resources increases for productivity and client applications.

  Large-scale systems will be effectively managed by downsizing the current administrative platform, installing new large-scale parallel platforms, and moving non-administrative users to open systems.

  Benefits of these changes include increased computing power for research, instruction, and administrative applications at lower initial and recurring (maintenance) costs, the ability to take advantage of the multitude of open systems software available to researchers, and compatibility of systems from the desktop to the large-scale platforms.

  Midrange computing will move toward open systems by phasing out all proprietary minicomputers. The benefits of these changes include software compatibility and portability, lower operational and hardware costs, and standardization.

• Adoption of national and international standards and models within the industry will continue. The University will continue to employ products and applications that utilize standards (OSI, ANSI, IEEE, etc.) as the basis for long-term connectivity and compatibility.

  By adhering to open systems and standards, whether officially established or de facto industry standards, the University will achieve several important objectives:

  • encourage and enhance inter-operability of hardware and applications

  • simplify support of systems and applications, thus allowing a greater level of support with the same level of resources

  • facilitate use of systems developed or enhanced at other institutions

• Provide support for specific hardware, systems software, and applications that are consistent with the objectives listed above. A complete list of standards and levels of support for the currently supported systems, together with projected changes to items on the list, is available from Information Systems.

  In order to achieve the objectives set forth in this statement, it is important that the users of computing be encouraged to acquire and use hardware and software that are consistent with the desired directions for computing at the University. A major inducement that can be offered is to provide support for only a specific set of products that give a range of choices to the user, but that are all appropriate, given the objectives. It is essential that users be fully informed of the products that are currently supported and of any proposed changes to such a list. With this information, users can make informed choices when selecting and acquiring new systems.