its in bits

Employee Survey

This week we are conducting our Employee Pulse survey. It's called a "pulse" survey because it is very short, just three questions, and it's about taking the pulse of IT Services. We want to measure whether we are creating an organization where employees feel valued and can do their best work.

The survey will be available, online, March 1–7. It is anonymous. The survey should only take you a few minutes to complete. I encourage you to take the time to provide your feedback.

While surveys are certainly important indicators, their key value is in providing point-in-time information so we can understand if our actions are improving the work experience. Of greater significance is each of you letting me, and your managers, know specifically what you think we can do to make IT Services a more rewarding place to work.

- Bill Clebsch
IT Services

A Note From Bill...

I believe there is one key to success for IT Services going forward, whether it is for our existing services or new projects. It is not a particular process, technology, or even strategy; it is simply providing an excellent customer experience during every interaction with our clients.

As technology needs at Stanford become even more numerous, clients have ever more choices about where to purchase services. The central element of service is value; our clients must feel that we are providing great value if we expect to keep their business. Oftentimes, we translate value immediately into cost, and cost is certainly a key component. However, cost is always considered in relationship to the quality of the service received. We all make decisions every day to choose services of quality over the cheapest option available.

How do we provide that quality to our clients? We start by providing systems and services that are reliable and intuitive. But equally important is to provide solutions tailored to what our clients need. The most important thing we can do here is to listen. Listen closely, in order to understand exactly what problems our clients face, and then figure out what we can do to solve them. Listen to see: how can we say yes? Our clients' needs are constantly changing, and to help them we must keep listening.

Once we listen, and understand, the other essential factor is in how we respond. We each make choices, about say, restaurants, based not only on how good the food is, but also by how well we are treated, by the service we receive. The quality of our service matters almost as much to our clients as the reliability and usefulness of the technical solution. In that way, IT is kind of funny; it's actually a very personal business. People have personal attachments to their issues, their data, and their computers.

Of course we all make mistakes. The amazing thing is how people who consistently deliver great client service can even turn a mistake into a positive client experience. They find a way to correct it, to make it up to us, to show they care. That creates customer loyalty, which is very, very powerful.

For us to create a legacy at Stanford that will make us proud, we need to be vigilant listeners and ask constantly, "how can we help our clients better achieve their goals?" Each thoughtful interaction provides an opportunity to build a foundation of positive client experiences. Through these relationships we build trust, loyalty, and partnerships. In time, we distinguish ourselves by delivering high quality technical solutions that respond to specific client needs in a manner that respects them.

- Bill Clebsch
IT Services

Redwood City Update

Strange things are afoot with the Redwood City projects. The University has chosen to take a step back and look at Redwood City in the context of a larger data center strategy. Stanford is considering on-campus, off-campus, and co-location options for its long term data center needs. At this point, it isn't entirely clear how (or possibly even if) a data center in Redwood City fits those needs.

Currently, we're interviewing consulting firms that can help us answer this question and hope to award a contract some time in the next few weeks. The consultant will be looking at our data center needs, our disaster recovery plans, and the priorities of IT Services data center clients. Their charter is to pull these factors together and determine if a data center at 510 Broadway in Redwood City should be part of the overall plan.

However, work is still moving forward on the building at 510 Broadway. We've entered the schematic design phase of the project, which will nail down a lot of the assumptions and refine the budget we created in the feasibility phase of the project. Schematic design will proceed until the end of March. We will wait for our consultants to make a recommendation before proceeding to the Board of Trustees to proceed with the construction project. This will push the overall schedule of the construction project back at least three months, to early spring of 2007.

Among the other things that are back up in the air is if, or when, any IT Services personnel will be moving to Redwood City. However if a move takes place, there will once again be showers—which are back in the plan.

The Stanford Hospital and Clinics are still on an aggressive schedule to move into their three buildings at the Redwood City campus in March and April, and our Shared Communications Services staff are working hard on bringing the Stanford phone system to those buildings.

For more information about the Redwood City projects, visit the project web site.

- Jon Pilat
Client Support; Project Management Office

Client Satisfaction Survey Update

Each April we release a Client Satisfaction survey to ask a random sample of faculty, students, and administrators to rate their satisfaction with our services and to help prioritize future directions. This year, we will conduct the survey during the April 3–14 time frame. The results are expected to be available in late May.

A draft survey will be available soon. In fact, IT Services staff members will have a chance to complete the survey in advance of its general release. We complete this dry run for several reasons: we want to hear your feedback about our services and receive your input on priorities for future directions, we need your help to test the mechanics of the survey, and we want you to be informed about the questions we are asking in case one of your colleagues asks you about it.

You'll receive a separate invitation to participate in this process. You should receive it around March 7th.

A special thanks to the product managers who helped us shape the questions; especially to those who were able to attend the February 13 and 14 review sessions. Members of the Client Satisfaction Survey Team are available to answer questions about the process.�

- The IT Services Client Satisfaction Team
Bill Clebsch, Jan Cicero, Jay Kohn, Chris Lundin, Nan McKenna, Jim Knox, Teresa Janeway, Lynne Myers, and Nancy Ware

Online CSO Retires

Effective March 1, 2006, the old online Communication Service order method for ordering IT Communication services will be closed down. The new method for ordering IT Communication services will be through the IT Services site.

All University and Hospital IT Communications services can be ordered through the IT Services site, which offers work order status, immediate order confirmation, complete order history, and detailed service profile information. Some of the most commonly ordered services include:

Cable TV
Calling Card
Voice Services (telephone, voicemail)
Cellular
PBN (Personal Billing Number; long distance access code)
DSL
Pagers
And more...

In addition to ordering services, the IT Services site is used to view and print monthly IT Services billing statements. Originally only available to University Department Contacts, effective with the March, 2006 month-end billing, Hospital Department Contacts will begin using the IT Services site to view and print their monthly IT Services billing statements.

For access to the IT Services site, Department Contacts should submit a HelpSU request. Select Request Category, Web Applications, Web sites; Request Type, IT Services (ITSS Billing—Departments). Note that an SUNet ID is required for access (basic, non-sponsored SUNet IDs are now available to Hospital employees who need site access).

For more information about the IT Services site, visit the help pages at itserviceshelp.stanford.edu.

- Vicki Hallett
Shared Application Services; Application Support

Service Level Agreements

Over the past few years, IT Services has worked to establish Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with our clients. There are many reasons for working toward a joint SLA. The primary reason is that it clarifies the roles and responsibilities that each party has for the service being offered.

This year, a team led by Jane Marcus has pulled together a unified SLA which incorporates the Data Center, Computer Resources Consulting (CRC), and some Telecommunications services into a single document. The team includes Teresa Janeway, Rodney Carter, Nan McKenna, Meighan McWilliam, Fred Hansson, Bernadette Drechsler, Will Mingle, Brian Wankel, and Anastasia Ginzbursky, plus the invaluable editing of Bruce Campbell. The SLAs consist of a general service section, a Data Center/Telecom section, a CRC section, and a set of standard service descriptions which are attached to each SLA, describing the specific services that we support for each client.

The final Service Level Agreement for each client is kept in a Remedy-based application as an attachment, along with the generic SLA template. SLA updates, such as adding or deleting services, can be noted and tracked in this application.

IT Services staff members with a Remedy license may view the application and review the SLA documents. Here are the basic steps to get started:

1. Open the Remedy client and log in.
2. From the File menu, select Open, Object List
3. In the window that comes up, click the Find tab and enter "client" in the Search Keywords text box.
4. Double-click on the Client SLA Database item.
5. From the Status drop-down list, select Active-Signed and click Search.
6. The list of SLAs will be presented at the top of the screen.

If you have trouble with access to the Remedy application, please submit a HelpSU request.

At present, there are 16 signed SLAs available in the database. Most are CRC SLAs, but we're adding Data Center SLAs as well. Reviewing these, especially the "Variances" section, is a good way to see what our clients value and depend on in their relationship with IT Services.

- Phil Reese
Client Support; Process and Account Management

Shibboleth at Stanford

In an academic environment, there is frequently a need to share resources and research across institutional boundaries. Researchers collaborate with colleagues from other universities, students take classes that are taught by faculty from other places, and journals and academic resources are available across many colleges, research institutions, and libraries. Our current IT environment doesn't make these interactions easy.

The only way to access restricted (e.g., WebAuthed) Stanford materials is by creating sponsored SUNet IDs for everyone who needs access. Similarly, accessing resources at our peer institutions requires creating accounts in their local authentication structure. This doesn't scale well, requires remembering lots of passwords, and requires figuring out how to sign up (and get sponsored) for all of these authenticators.

Shibboleth is an Internet2 consortium project that solves this problem by creating a concept of federated identity management. Any set of parties that use Shibboleth can create a trust relationship between their authentication systems. Service providers (web sites that require authentication) can allow access not only to users with local, authenticated credentials, but can trust users with credentials from federated authentication services as well.

Stanford is looking to join several large, general-purpose federations and will set up a process for joining smaller federations, many of which are special-purpose.

Down the road, there's an opportunity for Shibboleth to unite the various authentication systems at Stanford, including the stanford.edu Kerberos realm and the win.stanford.edu active directory domain in a locally-maintained federation. Other authentication entities at Stanford could also choose to participate. Shibboleth may also turn out to be the best answer for providing WebAuth-like service to Windows servers running IIS, as Shibboleth has a more mature Windows presence than WebAuth.

There are six main deliverables for the Shibboleth project:

Build and package a Shibboleth identity provider that will allow Shibboleth to interface with Stanford's Kerberos realm.
Package a client Shibboleth-interface kit similar to Stanford's WebAuth packages.
Establish at least one service provider at Stanford that uses Shibboleth, and enable Stanford users to use at least one remote Shibboleth-authenticated service.
Have Stanford join the InCommon and InQueue federations.
Create an ongoing process by which Stanford can join new federations.
Modify Stanford policy to allow the IT Services Kerberos 5 realm to assert the stanford.edu identity to federated service providers.

The Shibboleth project team consists of Bruce Vincent—in charge of policy and process; Scotty Logan—who has written extensions to our LDAP infrastructure to support Shibboleth-based directory access; Quanah Gibson-Mount and Russ Allbery—packaging and production readiness; Digant Kasundra—client deployment; and Jon Pilat—project manager. Lois Brooks from SULAIR is the project sponsor.

- Jon Pilat
Client Support; Project Management Office

Change Management Update

The production rollout of the new Change Management process and the new InfraEnterprise Change Management system began on February 28th, and will continue through the month of March. The phased rollout process actually began in December, and continued in January, with limited rollouts to pilot users in the Shared Application Systems, Telecom, and Unix Systems and Applications teams. Thanks again to the pilot users for doing “double entry” during the test period.

Training was held for Approvers and IT Initiators and is wrapping up this week. However, only about half of all registered Change Management users signed up, and even fewer than that (~20%) actually attended the training!

If you haven’t attended, please make plans to do so. We are offering another “Initiator” session on Monday, March 6, at 10 a.m. in Turing, and an "Approver" session on Wednesday, March 8, at 2 p.m., also in Turing. We strongly encourage you to attend, since the new process is significantly different from what you’re used to. The new tool has some unique characteristics as well, and may be different from your expectations. If you plan to attend one of these sessions, please RSVP by clicking one of the following links:

Initiator session on Monday 3/6 @ 10:00 in Turing

Approver session on Wednesday 3/8 @ 2:00 in Turing

If you cannot attend the training, we also have the training materials online. Check out these documents, as well as other useful information, on the new Change Management web site.

The rollout is being done in phases by workgroup. There is a link to the rollout schedule on the web site. Please take a look to see what the go-live date is for your group. If you don’t see where you fit in, please contact the Change Coordinator.

If you experience any difficulty using the new system, please submit a HelpSU request.

- Bill Heiser
Client Support; Project Management Office

Quarterly Exceptional Nominations

The Quarterly Exceptional nomination period is now open. Quarterly Exceptional awards are made to individuals and teams that made a significant contribution during the quarter. In addition, they should be seen to be a role model to others, consistently effective in getting things done well, and to demonstrate teamwork and collaboration. We are accepting nominations through May 5, 2006 for the January through March quarter. If you know of a deserving individual or team, please take time to complete a nomination form on their behalf.

You can read more about the program and find nomination forms on the RRI page.

- Nancy Ware
Planning and Communication

Official 2006 Holiday Schedule Announced

The University recently announced the official 2006 Holiday schedule. Since the web page was posted, the University also designated December 25th and 26th as official holidays.

The HR department has also announced that President Hennessy and Provost Etchemendy approved a closing schedule for the winter of 2006. IT Services will observe this planned shutdown. Details will follow later in the year.

The official announcement states: "The University will shutdown to the fullest extent possible beginning Wednesday, December 20, 2006—as of the close of business on Tuesday, December 19, 2006—and reopen with the start of business on Tuesday, January 2, 2007.

Three paid holidays will be observed during the winter closing period. In addition to the holidays, the University will provide one additional day off with pay for employees in operating units observing the shutdown. Employees in departments that do not close will not receive the additional paid day off. Operating units observing the shutdown are authorized to designate a day between December 20, 2006 and December 31, 2006, as the additional day off with pay. In rare cases where operations require that an extremely small number of employees must remain on duty in a unit that is otherwise closed, the Dean, Vice President, or Vice Provost has the discretion to approve an alternative paid day off for those employees who are required to work for operational reasons. Employees may use available vacation, PTO, floating holiday, or approved time off without pay to cover the remaining days of the closure."

Stanford University will observe the following dates as holidays during the period of December 20, 2006 through January 2, 2007:

- Monday, December 25, 2006
- Tuesday, December 26, 2006
- Monday, January 1, 2007

The dates designated as paid holidays are applicable to all regular staff employees, including those covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Temporary and casual employees are not eligible for paid holidays. The additional day off with pay is applicable to all regular staff who are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement, unless and until such an agreement is reached with the appropriate labor organization. You will be informed if and when the additional day off with pay is extended to these employees.

- Nancy Ware
Planning and Communication

A Bowling We Will Go...

Back by popular demand—the second not-so-annual IT Services Bowling Party! The party will include free bowling and shoe rental, pizza, and beer (a cash bar will also be available). Prizes and trophies will be awarded for high score and low score. A Sundial invitation should be on your calendar. Here are the specifics:

What: IT Services March Madness Bowling Party
When: Thursday, March 30th; 3pm–6pm
Where: Palo Alto Bowl, 4329 El Camino Real

See you on the lanes!

-Teresa Janeway
Client Support; Promotion and Publicity