Survey

Do you think the staff initiatives that Bill outlined at the Town Hall, and in his column in this issue, can make IT Services a better organization in which to work?

Yes
No
I'll wait to see

Results from last issue's survey question: In what way would you most appreciate your efforts at work to be acknowledged?

Please see the survey question results article in this issue.

Staff Profile

Gina Rebosura

Gina Rebosura works in Finance and Administration. She first came to Stanford in 1992.

 

How would you describe your current job responsibilities?

I provide administrative support for the occupants of Pine Hall, particularly the Networking Systems group. I handle equipment, maintenance support, and supplies purchasing, as well as building management. I also help out the other members of the Admin Services team when needed. It's constantly busy, but I learn something new every day. There is never a dull moment in my job!

Which aspects of your job do you enjoy the most?

I like being able to do a variety of tasks, never the same routine over and over again. And, of course, the people I work with are great! We know how to play, but we also work hard.

What did you do before you came to Stanford?

After college in the Philippines, I worked for NCR Corporation. I also drew illustrations for grade school textbooks on a part-time basis. My first job when I came to the US in 1992 was at the Stanford School of Medicine. I left in 1996 and worked as an underwriter for a medical malpractice insurance company in San Francisco. In 1998, I came back to Stanford and have been with IT Services since then.

What do you like to do when you're not at work?

I usually hang out with my 13-year old daughter. I am also an avid arts and crafts person, so I am a regular at Michael's. And I like to sketch portraits. I love drawing eyes!

What is your favorite movie, book, song?

Books? I pick whatever is on the Bestsellers list at Borders, but "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is a favorite from my childhood. Music and movies? Whatever sparks my interest!

Staff Happenings

Phyllis Olrich is bicycling off to her next career. That's right, after 32 years at Stanford, Phyllis will be retiring at the end of August. She plans to start a fitness business.

Phyllis has seen lots of changes, used countless Admin Systems, and mastered them all. She's worked at the Medical School, Psychology, Facilities, School of Education, ITSS (which was the Data Center at the time), and IT Services.

Phyllis's intelligence, experience, skills, dedication, and adaptability have served her colleagues and clients well.

When she's gone, who will motivate us to eat right and exercise more? How will we get vicarious workouts with if we can't watch Phyllis cycle her way to more ribbons in competitive biking? Who will we ask about SPIRES and WILBUR and other bits of Stanford's IT history? We'll miss that infectious laugh!

- Leni Silberman
Client Support; Technology Training Services

Erik Cummings is leaving Stanford at the end of this month to join Ambient Software as the Director of Operations. Ambient Software is the company behind the Pathworks product for procedure and process development and deployment.

Erik was instrumental in the formulation and startup of the 24x7 Production Control Group (PCG). Under Erik’s guidance, the PCG has gone from a concept to an effective operational group raising the bar for service and customer support. We wish Erik well in his new position.

- Bert Stubbs
Shared Communication Services; Operations

I am very pleased to announce that Sonia Siu has joined the Administrative Services Team as of August 1st, 2006.

Sonia graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Madison with a degree in Business Management and Marketing. Her past experience includes advertising, public relations, marketing, administrative support and customer service. She has organized many fun events including a concert featuring Yo-Yo Ma, beauty pageants, governmental functions, connoisseur dinners, press conferences, and other business and promotional events.

During leisure time, Sonia enjoys doing crafts, playing tennis, fine dining, and making desserts.

Sonia is located in Laurel and she is ready to help IT Services with any administrative needs.

- Cholada Chenhansa
Finance and Administration; Administrative Services

I am pleased to announce that the successful candidate for the first of two positions in H&S, is Noah Abrahamson. He officially started last week, but this is not the first time you have heard of him. Noah has been working as a Temp for over two months and in that short period of time he has made great contributions to CRC and the University.

Please join me in an explosive congratulations and welcome to Noah!

- Kim Seidler
Client Support; Computer Resource Consulting

Collaborating with colleagues at Cornell University, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Cal State Fresno, and Stanford, our own Nan McKenna recently had a paper published by Educause.

Campus IT Security: Governance, Strategy, Policy, and Enforcement represents work Nan began as part of a year-long IT leadership program in which she participated. Stop by Nan's office to congratulate her. She'll be happy to autograph a copy for you.

And just in case you think Nan doesn't have her "work/life balance" down, she also recently participated in the FINA World Masters Swimming Championships. Nan swam the 100 and 50 meter breastroke events and the 50 meter butterfly event. Truly a Renaissance woman!

- The Editors

its in bits welcomes more detailed employee news submissions from all staff. Please submit to itsinbits-submissions@lists.stanford.edu

Tech Briefings

Tech Briefings: None This Week

The summer Tech Briefings schedule is light. Check the Tech Briefings home page for specials and last-minute additions.

Tech Express: ReportMart1 Upgrade

ReportMart1, the portal (web site) that is used to access PeopleSoft, STARS, Kronos, Pinnacle, DSS, Space Mgmt., R&DE, and CAMS legacy reports, was upgraded on 7/31/2006 to replace Brio with Hyperion Performance Suite (HPS).

Representatives of the ReportMart1 team will demo the new portal and discuss the changes involved in this upgrade. Topics will include: new URLs; documentation; the plug-in installation for PC users; "Connect" (vs. "MyApps") for Mac users; improved searching; bookmarks and favorites; procedures for exporting data and saving/rerunning reports locally; known issues; and Q&A.

Thursday, August 17, 2006
12:00 to 1:00 p.m.
Turing Auditorium
Bill Roden and Anh Hoang, presenting

Technology Training Courses

Summer quarter classes are winding down and fall classes are being scheduled right now. Look for the September monthly flyer in your ID mail and for more email announcements in the weeks to come as classes are scheduled and seats become available.

Note: You can download a list or calendar view of classes on the Tech Training Site. Click on the appropriate link near the top of the page.

More information on courses, registration, and training is available at the Technology Training Services site.

- Phyllis Olrich
Client Support; Technology Training Services

IT Employment Opportunities

There were two new job postings for IT Services this week.

Req.#21523: Manager, Production Control Group, 100% FTE, Range 1M3, Bert Stubbs, hiring manager.

The Production Control Group (PCG) manager is responsible for system and service monitoring, incident management, and postmortem reviews of service issues. The PCG manager is also responsible for the incident management of system or service problems caused by regional disasters.

In this role, the PCG manager is responsible for the creation, implementation, and testing of the IT Service’s disaster plan and managing the IT Service’s Satellite Operations Center in support of the University disaster plan.

Req.#21537: Campus Readiness Specialist, 100% FTE, Range 3P3, Jim Knox, hiring manager.

The incumbent participates as a key member of project implementation teams, serving as a client advocate while providing expertise for the planning and delivering of communication and training that prepares the Stanford community for service and system introductions and changes.

To view the complete listings or to apply for a position, visit the StanfordJobs web site at: jobs.stanford.edu.

There are other open Information Technology positions at Stanford. To see what other opportunities exist on campus, link to the full list of all open IT positions at Stanford

Quote of the Week

"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."

- Leonard Cohen

News

A Note From Bill...

I was thrilled to see how many of you were able to make it to the Town Hall last week. I hope you found the discussion of our current project status, and future project plans, as valuable as I found the opportunity to share them with you. Each Town Hall seems to bring more open and lively discussion, and I think that is one sign of a healthy organization. This issue, I’d like to tell you about some upcoming initiatives that I think will further improve the health of IT Services.

At the Town Hall, I did an impromptu survey and asked how much time you spend at a computer each day. I was staggered to see how many of us are in front of our computers more than six hours a day. That’s why I’m excited about our upcoming collaboration with Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S). This fall, IT Services and EH&S will launch an initiative to evaluate and correct any office ergonomic issues in work spaces and, as necessary, replace furniture and equipment so that your office environment provides the comfort you need to do your best work. I was already aware of the importance of office ergonomics, but this initiative will allow us to address the issue organizationally rather than individually. I expect this will help relieve some of the stresses our type of work causes. If this isn’t enough, we will also continue to make (our successful) chair massages available twice a quarter so that each of us can learn how to stay more relaxed while glued to our computers.

Another staff-oriented initiative set to start in the new year is a formal mentoring program built from our successful pilot this past year. All senior staff (3P5s, 4P5s, 1M5s) will be required, as a key goal in their IPP, to mentor someone in their particular area of strength for at least two hours a month. This will not only help grow our staff from within by sharing our knowledge and skill sets, it will also help us to become even more organizationally and professionally connected to each other.

On the theme of growing from within, we are also working on developing technical job competencies. These are very precise descriptions that delineate the differences in job classification (e.g., 4P3, 4P4, 4P5) in each job area. This work includes suggestions on educational opportunities for gaining the additional competencies. To date, we have been working with HR on descriptions for the Storage, UNIX, Windows, and DBA staffing positions. Over the coming year, we will try to cover all of our positions. You should work with your manager to identify the training you want and need. IT Services will fund it.

Finally, we have created an “innovation fund” to support staff ideas that could lead to new ways of delivering our services more effectively and efficiently. Later in September, your directors and managers will be explaining the details of how this initiative will work.

Everyone agrees that staff is an organization’s most important resource. I hope these initiatives indicate that IT Services is committed to making the organization a better place to work for staff. I welcome your input and look forward to working with you on these (and other) staff programs in the upcoming year.

- Bill Clebsch
IT Services

Changes...

Effective September 1, there will be several functional and/or reporting changes within Shared Communication Services and Shared Application Services. These changes are part of a plan that will better align specific functions and tasks between the groups, while maintaining each group's primary mission. The departments involved as part of this restructuring are Facilities Engineering, led by Erich Snow, Installation and Maintenance, led by Rocco Petrunti, and Technical Facilities, led by Bob Moya. 

The Facility Engineering department will assume responsibility for all aspects relating to the IT Services underground communications conduit system. In addition, the Computer Aided Design group, led by Relu Vasiliu, will report to Erich Snow. Space planning and security for Stanford's 1700+ telecommunications room facilities will also reside with Facility Engineering.

The Installation and Maintenance department will assume responsibility for all aspects relating to the deployment and maintenance of Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) systems used to protect IT Services EDGE equipment throughout the campus. These UPS systems are typically installed in telecommunications room locations throughout the campus.

The Technical Facilities department, led by Bob Moya, will report to John Freshwaters and devote its full attention to activities specifically related to Data Centers and the Electronic Communications Hub (ECH) sites. Property Administration functions will continue to reside in Technical Facilities.

Please let John Freshwaters or Jay Kohn know if you have any questions.

- Jay Kohn
Shared Communication Services

Desktop Backup

Although we now feel that we have a pretty solid idea of what we want to offer, and how to streamline the solutions in the next six to nine months, we still have several options for desktop backup. We have IBM’s Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) workstation backup for all clients, and Iron Mountain’s "Connected" as an ASP offering to back up data and workstations using the MS Windows environment. We also have a plethora of individualized solutions using backup tools such as Retrospect, Symantec, Iomega, Microsoft, ARCserve, and many more.

Although we don’t think we can make everyone happy with a single solution (there will always be exceptions), we feel that in the future we can meet most backup needs with either TSM or Iron Mountain’s Connected. We would like to make the very capable TSM less expensive and easier to use (and this is possible). We would also like to bring the equipment and operation of the Connected solution in-house, where we can control the support and billing.

Each solution has its good and bad qualities, and finding the right combination of cost and convenience can be difficult. TSM is very robust, configurable, and there is internal help available. Some features are very easy to use, but in general it is considered to be difficult and non-intuitive. Connected is considered to be intuitive and easy to use, but it does not have a Mac client, and the hope for support from the vendor has not turned out as expected.

TSM will continue to be the enterprise solution (for servers), and although the decision has not been made regarding workstations, with some of the elegant options for encryption, Connected will likely be the solution for workstation backup (desktop and laptop).

With the rising concern about protecting intellectual property, the increasing regulations dictating how data is to be protected and retained, and the ever-growing efforts to hack and/or exploit information (data), more people are thinking about “backing up” the information on their desktops.  And, more people are concluding that they can no longer adequately protect their data with some of the home-grown solutions they have been using.

Beyond the obvious client issues, there are other complications: a need to be considerate of time to backup, how intrusive the process is on regular work, and the impact on network bandwidth. We also need to make sure that the solution is supportive of the many other efforts and initiatives including “offsite” disaster recovery and protecting laptops.

The good news is that it looks like we can achieve the goal of protecting workstation data simply and cost effectively in the next year. The bad news is that a solution is not available “now.”

- Dan Stillmaker
Shared Application Services; Backup and Storage


Email Service Improvements

The last few months have been a busy time for the IT Services email team.

The majority of the incoming and outgoing email servers received an upgrade to better hardware, and the email delivery software technology has been migrated from Sendmail to Postfix, which has a superior and more secure architecture.

Our new gateways enforce stricter rules and reject messages that do not have valid domain names or do not employ proper SMTP protocols. This rule enforcement effectively keeps millions of SPAM messages from making their way into individual mailboxes. (See the infrastructure reports for details.)

Distribution list migration from Majordomo to Mailman is progressing at a rapid pace. 40% of all email distribution lists are now using Mailman, which offers a wealth of features and improved SPAM filtering. The service is also mirrored with a fail-over capability.

Our current "hot spot" continues to be email backup. Ever-increasing volumes of email make this an elusive target. The email team, in partnership with the storage/backup group, have now implemented a more efficient backup scheme. This change has yielded a reduction in average backup time from 24 hours down to ten hours.

With the recent progress, we are continuing our efforts with additional projects and initiatives. Our planned "next steps" include: a Webmail upgrade, implementation of a hardware load balancer, further reductions in email backup times, and more aggressive SPAM filtering, including the routing of highly-rated SPAM to a SPAM folder on the server-side. We are also beginning evaluations of new email client software and unified messaging solutions.

We welcome your feedback on the email service and we would like to express our gratitude to the IT Services staff who have been so supportive of these changes!

- Xueshan Feng and Steven Swinkels
Shared Application Services; UNIX Systems and Applications

Survey Question Results

We received twelve responses to our last its in bits survey question: "In what way would you most appreciate your efforts at work to be acknowledged?" The top three responses were:

  • Increase my pay and/or provide me a bonus (7 suggestions),
  • Say "thank you," and include a written note to my file and/or in my IPP (4 suggestions),
  • Provide me with respect (3 suggestions).
    • Note: Respect is equated to "listen to what I say, know what I do, and keep me informed."

Additional feedback included public "acknowledgment of contribution and success" and "let me pick my gift."

Dani Aivazian and I are re-evaluating our entire Reward, Recognition, and Incentives program. This feedback will certainly inform that work. Final recommendations will be reviewed with the Directors and Executive Directors.

We know rewards, recognition, and incentives are very personal. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. What is meaningful to one person may not be of value to someone else. If you have other ideas, please contact either one of us. We are most interested in learning about the type of recognition that is most meaningful to you.

Thanks for taking time to provide feedback.

- Nancy Ware
Planning, Metrics, and Communication

Data Disposal

Stanford has new regulations in place for securing data on electronic devices that are set for disposal. The new guidelines and regulations were revisited and then revised by the Office of Research Administration and the Property Management office.

The changes go into effect September 1, 2006. They are available for review on the Office of Research Administration site.

- Shirley Hodges
Client Support; Computer Resource Consulting

Mailman Rings More Than Twice

Several Tech Briefings about the Mailman migration have filled Turing Auditorium to capacity over the last couple of weeks. The migration is cruising right along; over 5,000 defunct mailing lists have been deleted from the Majordomo system, more than 6,000 lists are now using the Mailman system, and just over 8,000 mailing lists remain to be moved over in the next month.

More information on the Mailman system, that the @lists service is moving to, can be found at http://mailman.stanford.edu.

- Tim Torgenrud
Client Support; Project Management Office

Parking Permits

Parking permits and Commute Club membership expire August 31st. You might want to consider carefully before renewing a permit this year.

The Parking and Transportation office will help with any questions regarding Commute Club membership, Clean Air Cash, Guaranteed Ride Home, the Marguerite shuttle and real-time map, Caltrain GO Pass, VTA Eco Pass, Line U, Stanford Ridematching Service, bicycle program, charter bus services, and pre-tax transit passes and schedules. They will even plan your route on a bike or public transit—from your front door to Stanford.

There is a $432 differential between purchasing a "C" permit and getting the Commute Club rebate. This might be a good time to consider all of the alternative transportation to campus that is available and the potential savings.

Visit the Parking and Transportation Services web site for more information.

- Parking and Transportation Services

Reward Offered

A Spruce Hall resident recently returned from vacation to find this five-foot Scarlet Macaw painted upon his wall.

The artist has yet to identify him/herself and all obvious suspects have denied culpability. A $5 (food voucher) reward is being offered to anyone providing information leading to the identification of the artist. Please send information to the editors at itsinbits-submissions@lists.stanford.edu.

- The Editors

IT Services Summer Picnic: Next Week

Come on down to the IT Services Summer Picnic! It will be held on Thursday, August 24th, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on the lawn between Turing, Redwood, and Spruce.

Come early because there will be tasty Armadillo Willy's BBQ Brisket and Chicken (along with a vegetarian selection for those who prefer it) and it will go fast! We will have yummy side dishes, and desserts you can grab and munch on.

Erik Cummings promises to keep the music interesting, and we will have the air hockey game out. Greg Chong won the Armadillo Willy's gift card last time. Look for new prizes this time and challenge Bill Clebsch to a game; he thinks he can play. Let's show him how it's done staff-style!

There will be a small gift so come on by and get one!

- The Picnic Organizing Committee (we'll never admit who we are...)

Town Hall Recap

The slides from our August 8th Town Hall session are now available on the Staff Meetings web site.

The meeting provided an update of our initiatives: how we were progressing with our goals for FY06 as well as a preview of the likely initiatives for FY07. We spent time reviewing details of the Focus on Staff initiatives. These programs will begin in September and respond to feedback collected through the employee satisfaction survey as well as your input to Directors and Executive Directors. Bill also discusses these initiatives in his column above.

We concluded the session by celebrating the accomplishments of our Quarterly Exceptional team recipients. The teams receognized were:

Continuing Studies Team
Caren Kammeyer, Stacy Lee, Leroy Altman, Paul Keser, Meghan McWilliam, and Yue Lu.

NetDB 4.0 Team
Dmitri Priimak, Douglas Fletcher, Gaby Rodriguez, Joel Lidtke, Rob Riepel, Russ Allbery, and Sunia Yang.

The day ended with a reception in the grassy courtyard outside of Turing Auditorium featuring chair massages. This was an element of our upcoming initiative to more effectively balance our work within our lives.

- Nancy Ware
Planning, Metrics, and Communication

About its in bits

A regular summary of IT business, news about personnel, and pointers to other information of interest to IT Services staff. Coordinated, compiled, and published by the Communication Strategy and Standards Team. its in bits is published on the first and third Wednesday of the month.

Submissions are due by Noon on the Friday before the scheduled issue, to itsinbits-submissions@lists.stanford.edu for consideration. its in bits is distributed via email to its-all-staff@lists.stanford.edu and the new subscription list itsinbits-subscribers@lists.stanford.edu. People outside of IT Services can self-subscribe via majordomo.

The next its in bits will be published on Wednesday, September 6, 2006