OIT supports the goals of “The Pathway to the Future: NC State’s 2011-2020 Strategic Plan” through the following services. More details about these services can be found in the OIT 2015-16 Annual Report.

UNIVERSITY STRATEGIC GOAL 1: ENHANCE THE SUCCESS OF OUR STUDENTS THROUGH EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION

• Continue to expand the Project Management Lite Program. Employed 11 interns in the program this summer and will be employing more students in fall 2016.
• Delivered 16,000 Computing @ NC State to students and parents to educate them about IT resources and acceptable use.
• Implemented the Pack Planner within the Student Information System (SIS) to aid students in identifying appropriate classes by loading a template of courses for each semester based on degree requirements. It is expected to aid students in making timely progress toward degree their degrees.
• Provided administrative access for advisors to the Enrollment Wizard to enhance efficiency and effectiveness during class registration planning.  
• Implemented support within SIS for various policy changes such as the revised Satisfactory Academic Progress rules and various other Fostering Undergraduate Student Success policies.
• Designed, built and implemented self-service grade exclusion (formerly “course repeat”) and appeal process within SIS.
• Began development for an automated workflow process to aid in the evaluation of new external courses that will significantly reduce the time students wait for transfer articulation results.
• Partnered with the Division of Academic and Student Affairs and the Division of Enrollment Management and Services to implement the United Student Success and Grades First product from the Education Advisory Board as an “early warning” student success tool.
• Implemented the Transcript Capture module within OnBase Document Management System to facilitate the OCR capture, indexing, verification, storage, retrieval of transcripts in OnBase, and transcript metadata loading to SIS for equivalency processing for transfer students.
• Implemented OnBase Financial Aid module federal aid year changes for the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid to support student financial assistance.
• Provided students with hands-on training in video production and sports television through Student Media Student Services. Former students used this experience to get employment with GoPack and ESPN.
• Worked on an innovative academic analytics initiative to provide individualized help to students regarding their progress and problems in the courses they are taking and providing similar feedback to the teacher regarding each student. This formative assessment with feedback can guide each student and the teacher towards improvement.
• Assisting with a multi-year project run by the Office of the University Architect to address initially the state of 110 learning spaces for campus and their current Learning Space Rating System scores.
• Partnered with the Office of Institutional Research & Planning and SAS to develop a strategy and plan for implementing the SAS Visual Analytics platform using student cohort data. This implementation will ultimately result in better institutional data management and analytics, beginning with the delivery of university Fact Books in the fall.
• Partnered with PCOM ERM students on a practicum project to conduct an enterprise-wide risk assessment of a data security breach (one of the university’s identified top-10 risks).

UNIVERSITY STRATEGIC GOAL 2: ENHANCE SCHOLARSHIP AND RESEARCH BY INVESTING IN FACULTY AND INFRASTRUCTURE

• Made $60,000 available annually for the Multimedia Accessibility Grant, which provides video captioning for faculty who want to proactively caption video or who have an accommodation request. Provided 24 grants in 2015-16.
• Released the Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) Go App in the Apple App Store. The app allows university iOS users (iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch) another way to access the VCL, NC State’s cloud computing system that provides 24×7 remote access to high-end lab computers and software.
• Deployed storage and computing infrastructure to support the projects included in the UNC Research Opportunities Initiative (ROI) grant. NC State, in partnership with UNC Charlotte and the Renaissance Computing Institute, continues to build a cloud-based computing infrastructure to support research projects important for North Carolina’s economy. The partnership received a $2.1 million ROI grant that provides funding for innovative research in advanced manufacturing; marine and coastal science; defense, military and security; pharmacoengineering; energy; and data sciences.
• Released VCL version 2.4.2 in collaboration with Apache VCL community.
• Purchased and began deployment of new storage to support long-term storage of research data.
• Continued outreach work with Community Colleges to utilize VCL, primarily focusing on non-Windows-based applications, due to Microsoft and Adobe licensing challenges.
• Partnered with SPARCS to assist researchers in negotiating and establishing security requirements during pre-award contracts and grants negotiations.
• Began, in partnership with the Office of Research, Innovation and Economic Development, the development of secure IT services for sensitive research contracts or grants to meet NIST 800-171 compliance by December 2017.
• Established a security and compliance program for the PowerAmerica Institute, including the implementation of a FedRAMP-compliant cloud services environment (Google.gov) to meet the Department of Energy requirements.
• Installed an overlay research network in six buildings using software defined networking (SDN) to create unique control mechanisms for network traffic. SDN opens up a huge range of possibilities for research collaboration. This work is part of the Campus Cyberinfrastructure – Network Infrastructure and Engineering Grant.

UNIVERSITY STRATEGIC GOAL 3: ENHANCE INTERDISCIPLINARY SCHOLARSHIP TO ADDRESS THE GRAND CHALLENGES OF SOCIETY

• Partnering with UNC Charlotte and the Renaissance Computing Institute to build a cloud-based computing infrastructure to support research projects important for North Carolina’s economy.
• Continued to partner with regional organizations to develop a testbed to transfer large research datasets and permit regional experimentation with software-defined networking technologies. The testbed will eventually allow institutions to dynamically construct research circuits across the networks of numerous universities and national labs.

UNIVERSITY STRATEGIC GOAL 4: ENHANCE ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE BY CREATING A CULTURE OF CONSTANT IMPROVEMENT

• Completed the initial draft of the first University Cyber Security Strategic Plan/Roadmap to outline a strategic plan to secure university information systems and data and achieve university-level compliance with rules, regulations, laws and standards, including but not limited to: ISO-27002, PCI-DSS, Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS), and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 800 series.
• Attested PCI compliant with the Controller’s Office for three of four merchant types. The remaining merchant type is 94 percent compliant, which demonstrates significant progress.
• Extended OnBase Document Management System with implementations for Human Resources, Chancellor’s Office and Advancement Prospect Research for document retention, efficiency, storage savings, and ease of document search/retrieval. Implemented redaction for College of Veterinary Medicine hospital for securing Social Security numbers within funding documents.
• Implemented System Access Request changes for SIS, Human Resources and Finance tools/upgrades, JAR, OnBase and REPORTER.
• Completed the upgrade of the Human Resources System from version 9.1 to  9.2 along with significant infrastructure upgrades, including the move from Solaris to Linux and the Oracle and PeopleTools upgrades. Developed and implemented the Job Action Request (JAR) module within the Human Resources 9.2 System to streamline the initiation and approval of personnel actions and automate applicant background checks.
• Implemented preferred names and fine-grained employee/student privacy in a number of administrative/academic systems.
• Completed development efforts along with most of the deployment activities required for a November implementation of Oracle’s Identity Management platform and new Self Service Password Reset application.
• Designed, built and implemented a Service Center module within the Financial System to streamline management of service-center related financial activities.
• Designed, built and implemented support for self-service PCard Receipt Upload and Electronic Statement Signatures  within the Financial and OnBase Document Management Systems.
• Began reviewing all campus requests to purchase software applications and renewals over $5,000 to ensure they meet university, federal and state guidelines for security and accessibility. These requests include software, software as a service, cloud services, current software subscriptions, and maintenance and support.
• Entered into an agreement with DLT Solutions, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) government-authorized re-seller that offers cloud solutions on behalf of Internet2 and its university member community. Under the Internet2 negotiated terms, account owners can continue to use all of the functionality provided by AWS. The price of services is currently 3 percent less because of the aggregate volume of collective purchases by campus.
• Rolled out Office 365 to students, faculty and staff. Office 365 is Microsoft’s latest version of its Office suite of software, including Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
• Consolidated Bronto campus customers under a campus-wide Bronto Master Agreement.
• Expanded the CrashPlan client base from 500 to 1,100 seats to meet campus demand.
• Completed Postini migration to Google Vault.
• Leveraged InCommon participation via Shibboleth to offer campus users single sign-on convenience to 40 international federations in the eduGain global inter-federation service.
• Deployed Identity Finder, data security software that searches for and identifies any payment card data stored on local or network drives, to meet the requirements for compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS). IDF was installed on every Merchant workstation that processed payment card data, might have processed payment card data, or was used for accessing payment reports.
• Upgraded to the Shibboleth v3 authentication system to enforce password expiration across campus systems that use the login service and provide notifications of pending expiration.
• Launched PowerOn, a power management application that allows students, faculty and staff to remotely power on certain desktops and servers connected to the campus wired network, when needed.
• Began deployment of ubiquitous wireless throughout residence halls. Project is expected to be completed by Summer 2017.
• Rolled out Windows 10 for all new managed machines during phase 1 in late March 2016. Phase II, which included a scheduled deployment across the rest of the environment, began in June.
• Installed CloudLock Security Fabric, cloud security protection to assist with administrative tasks and compliance issues for the Google Apps @ NC State (google.ncsu.edu) domain.
• Implemented the IT Purchase Compliance Program to ensure IT software and cloud purchases are secure and accessible. There were 27 assessments performed as part of the program.

UNIVERSITY STRATEGIC GOAL 5: ENHANCE LOCAL AND GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT THROUGH FOCUSED STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS

• Partnered with the Office of Institutional Research & Planning (OIRP) and SAS to complete a Proof of Concept (POC) for the SAS Visual Analytics (VA) platform using student cohort data. Information from this initiative will be used to develop a VA implementation strategy for better institutional data management and analytics.
• Contributed to a new version of the VCL code for the Apache VCL project.
• Partnered with Appalachian State University to provide Tier 3 support for their phone system. This allows App State to provide phone service at a much lower rate than their current outsourced solution while providing NC State with additional staff resources to improve resiliency of skillsets.
• Continued efforts with the City of Raleigh and Wake County to increase broadband to the Triangle’s seven-county metro area via the Gig.U initiative.
• Continued partnering with MCNC and other Triangle campuses to develop a comprehensive strategy for software defined networking (SDN) across campuses.
• Developed a cloud-based security and compliance program for the PowerAmerica Institute.
• Developed and implemented the REPORTER system to support internal (required training) and external (outreach) non-credit course registration.