Looking Forward
Unifying our path
A university-wide initiative was recently launched to emphasize a focus on driving efficiency, effectiveness and operational excellence in support of the mission of the university. Within Technology Services, this brought significant change focused on unification through common technologies, processes and focus on customer service. Key to our efforts was to tightly align our changes with those of the other business groups as they went through a similar centralization process.
Technology Services is positioned to lead the unification of a growing organization, launch centralized, enterprise-level services campus wide and streamline processes and procedures to enhance collaboration. Key to our success will be a focus on providing advanced solutions and technology that wasn’t achievable in a distributed model.
As an organization focused on the success of our customers, the commitment to continuous improvement and supporting innovation in teaching, research and service remains steadfast.
By supporting, encouraging and improving the professional opportunities of employees, Technology Services is focused on creating true career paths, not just jobs, for our professional staff.
Achievements
Centralizing help desk & ticketing system
A key component in supporting the new organizational structure at Texas A&M includes establishing a university-wide help desk and ticketing system to handle requests for technology support. The enterprise system will become the main point of contact for all IT issues for employees and students to ensure higher quality, consistent customer service. Texas A&M currently has more than 16 ticketing systems with various processes in place. A central help desk system will provide campus members with a streamlined solution to create a ticket and provide broad insights on the health of campus technology. Campus members will only need to remember a single email address or URL to get assistance. Technology Services selected TeamDynamix after three vendor demonstrations and will incrementally transition campus to this tool in January 2023. Common processes and documentation will also be developed so the tool is used consistently across campus.
Technology Services implementing new cybersecurity measures
Each month, Technology Services blocks around 37 billion cyber attacks and 99 percent of all incoming malicious network traffic. In an effort to always work toward top-notch cybersecurity, Technology Services provides guides and training opportunities for campus staff, faculty and students, and launches a cybersecurity awareness month campaign each October. This campaign aims to increase awareness and educate the campus community on the foundational principles of cybersecurity to avoid being scammed or compromising equipment. Additionally, the Technology Services team has launched campus-wide initiatives like Duo two-factor authentication and identified a new system to consolidate and record all IT assets across campus. The Technology Services team works closely with The Texas A&M University System Security Operations Center and with the dedicated university privacy officer in the Office of Risk, Ethics and Compliance.
Unified project management
To support efficiencies and delivery of IT support campus wide, Technology Services invested in identifying employees to serve as designated project managers to support the university’s high-profile technology initiatives. Three existing project management offices (Technology Services, Technology Services - Provost IT and Technology Services - Student Affairs) were centralized into one. This will ultimately allow for the implementation of a single intake process for projects and allow employees to work closely with the recently launched business relationship unit serving the unified Technology Services team.
Maximizing Value
Uniting Technology Services across campus
Technology Services united more than 800 technology professionals across campus to support a centralized organizational structure. By unifying campus IT, Technology Services will be able to streamline processes and evaluate technology decisions across the organization.
Partner Success
Working groups offer expertise and collaboration across campus
To help launch Texas A&M University into the next era of success, a university-wide effort began and working groups were established. Tasked with evaluating key areas and outlining ways to implement positive change, teams across campus offered expertise and experience in collaboration with one another. To supplement the effort of the larger working groups, Technology Services formed additional sub-groups to help accomplish specific goals. In appreciation for the time and talent invested, a huge “thank you” goes to the following working groups: organizational design, academic, research, and the student/staff/faculty outcomes groups. Each member worked collaboratively to tackle centralization processes and efficiencies, integrate campus ticketing systems, identify cybersecurity technology improvements and support the creation of a project management office. Through dedication, hard work and a clear vision, Technology Services met the initial deadlines set and will continue to implement new processes and strategies to increase collaboration across campus in 2023.
Technology Services ensures centralized academic programs succeed
Technology Services led the unification of technology resources and professionals as part of a university-wide effort to set a firm foundation for the future that began in 2021. To successfully implement this organizational change, strategic planning was needed to account for the anticipated needs of each division, unit, college and school across campus.
An early success was the integration of three independent IT units into one for the newly formed College of Arts and Sciences. Bringing together these teams required the building of new solutions, one of which was a single ticketing system, to support 18 departments, including related interdisciplinary programs and centers. In order to prepare for the move of Biomedical Sciences from the Veterinary Medicine program (VetMed) into the College of Arts and Sciences, Technology Services transitioned the department from a local network file sharing system to OneDrive and SharePoint. VetMed maintained management of Biomedical devices until the College of Arts and Sciences was ready to transfer all technology assets.
Facilities and Energy Services partner on a centralized IT strategy
In support of the university effort to centralize and strengthen collaboration across campus, the newly formed Facilities and Energy Services division partnered with Technology Services in coordinating the technology needs of relocated and realigned faculty and staff across campus. These moves were complex, with employees and sometimes entire departments being geographically moved among buildings both on- and off-campus. Each move required a centralized technology strategy so that daily operations were not impacted and faculty and staff had the immediate tools available to be successful in the restructuring.
Anticipating needs and proactively identifying solutions helped Technology Services address the challenges in such a significant change for the campus community. The change in physical location impacted networking, telephone communications and equipment including technology shared among different units like workroom printers. Within this project, some of the key obstacles to overcome involved evaluating and finding solutions for software licensing, addressing shared storage and shared file access, and planning for equipment permission needs. In total, Technology Services moved 22 departments and more than 720 people across 30 buildings in the span of 8 months.