Bamboo Project carries out 4 workshops with 94 universities and organizations to develop cyberinfrastructure for the arts and humanities
The 18-month Bamboo Planning Project, which kicked off in April 2008 with a $1.4 million planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago, was greeted with great interest by universities and organizations internationally. More than 90 institutions and organizations participated in the four kick-off planning workshops (the Workshop 1 series) held from April through July 2008 in Berkeley, Chicago, Paris, and Princeton. Approximately 360 humanities faculty, campus information technology leaders, computer and information scientists, senior librarians, and others joined together in these four three-day workshops to explore current and future scholarly practices in the arts and humanities, and to define how a future Bamboo consortium could develop shared technology services to advance arts and humanities research.
The Bamboo community will use the data from these four instances of Bamboo Workshop 1 to set the stage for the remaining Bamboo planning process. Community members will help to build a detailed picture of scholarly practices in the humanities, which will then serve as the foundation for Bamboo's shared technology services roadmap. The data from the Bamboo Workshop 1 series has now been published for public review on the Bamboo wiki. (Also see an interesting two-part article series in the Chronicle of Higher Education about Bamboo Workshop 1.)
The Bamboo program team has also announced the plans and requirements for participating in the next Bamboo workshop, Workshop 2. The Open Letter to the Bamboo Community describes how this workshop will build from Workshop 1 and what interested institutions and organizations will need to do to continue on in the Bamboo planning process, whose ultimate goal is by September 2009, to have formed a consortium of institutions and organizations who can work together to develop shared technology services to advance arts and humanities research.
UC Berkeley Participants:
- Program co-director: David Greenbaum,
- Program manager: Rich Meyer,
- Architect: Steve Masover,
- Principal investigator: Janet Broughton,
Campus network infrastructure management
In support of the University's Clean/Green efforts, the existing lease of two Toyota RAV4-EV electric vehicles was extended for an additional five years. Also, two ZENN (Zero Emission, No Noise) electric vehicles were purchased. These vehicles are used by voice and data technicians when on installation or trouble calls.
Infrastructure Services completed data and voice installations in the East Asian Library, the Bancroft Library, and Stanley Hall; upgraded cabling in Evans and McCone Halls; and installed new air-blown, single-mode fiber in University Hall. In addition, T1 connections to Edwards Track, West Bleachers, and 2223 Fulton were replaced with campus-owned fiber (serving approximately 10 departments).
Inter-building conduit and fiber installations in the northwest portion of campus, serving Li Ka Shing Center, Hilgard Hall, Wellman Hall, Giannini Hall, and University House, were also completed.
Technical contact: John Hess,
Project manager: Bruce Lorenzen,
Campus partnerships
IST–Application Services has engaged in several partnerships this year to optimize the evolution of IT on campus. These partnerships included:
- Building relationships with faculty in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) by
- launching a pilot Subversion source code repository that was used to support a computer science class, and
- collaborating with EECS on a campuswide site license for TextMate, the leading editing tool for Ruby-on-Rails code.
- Expanding the existing partnership between Educational Technology Services (ETS) and IST to develop joint standards for user interface design.
- Partnering with Summer Sessions and UC Extension to implement the Angel Learning Management System for distance learning, and integrated it with UC Berkeley core student systems.
Technical contact: Bill Allison,
Data center
Almost 80 percent of usable rack space in the campus data center is now occupied or reserved, and expansion possibilities are being explored. Concentrated efforts in gaining better control of the air flow and temperature throughout the facility have been made — data center windows have been insulated and in-rack blanking panels are being installed.
Half of the data center tape library has been converted into a staging room. This project enabled the removal of all crating and packing material from the equipment floor, reducing the possibility of contamination and safety hazards.
In partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), a high-performance computing cluster for a faculty researcher has been implemented in the campus data center, and a process to deploy and manage the service was developed.
Technical contact: Steve Aguirre,
Project manager: Lucia Tsai,
Enhancements to campus technology accessibility
IST departments and the OCIO are collaborating with the campus Disabled Students Program (DSP) to make campus technology more accessible. For example, faculty accommodation letters for students are now web accessible. With the support of software donations on a one-year basis from several vendors, Client Services (CS) worked with DSP to create desktop environments that use assistive technology software in the campus's general access computing facilities. Also, CS is researching appropriate licensing strategies to further enhance greater campus usage of assistive technology software.
The Web Applications unit now submits all new systems to the campus Web Access group for review prior to launch. In addition, Application Services sends a representative to each Web Access meeting to help the group in its efforts to educate the campus.
Web Applications manager: Bill Allison,
Assistive technology advisor: Lucy Greco,
Facilities project lead: Sian Shumway,
Identity management
UC Berkeley joined UCTrust and InCommon.
CAS single sign-on has been implemented as a campus service.
IST–Infrastructure Services worked with University Relations to add about 400,000 alumni to the CalNet LDAP system in order to provide better email forwarding capabilities, and to allow future alumni applications and services to integrate more easily with UC Berkeley systems.
A campuswide identity and access management steering committee was created to govern identity management (IdM) issues related to guest accounts, roles definitions, and affiliates. Initial stakeholder interviews were performed to determine requirements for campuswide IdM.
Technical contact: Dedra Chamberlin,
Management contact: Michael Green,
Publication of project management standards and tools
This summer, the Technology Program Office (TPO) published the campus's first ever standards for project management methodology, along with report forms and instructions. The primary objective of using a project management methodology is to maximize the benefits of IT project investment and to minimize risk. The methodology guides project managers through the five phases of a project: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring/controlling, and closing. The benefits that will be achieved as the campus IT community works toward standardizing the approach to project management include:
- an increase in the number of successful projects, i.e., delivered on time and on budget;
- an increase in the number of well-designed and cost-effective project deliverables to meet the needs of the campus community;
- an increase in the number of projects that are identified early on as being "at risk" so the campus will have a higher likelihood of taking successful corrective action;
- an increase in the number of projects that are terminated after being evaluated that they are no longer appropriate for campus investment; and
- an increase in the number of satisfied stakeholders.
The TPO is working with recipients of IT Bank funding to implement these project-management standards this fiscal year. Information about the methodology and report forms, as well as project-management training, online references, and project-management consulting is now available on the TPO website.
Project sponsor: Peggy Huston,
Project manager: Jon Conhaim,
Security
The Campus Information, Security, and Privacy Committee (CISPC) released a draft of the Minimum Security Standards for Electronic Information [PDF], which will become provisional policy this month pending the close of the comment period.
A major review of all UC Berkeley e-commerce requirements was completed. The result was the decision to outsource all payment services and to decommission homegrown e-commerce tools. This lowers Berkeley's credit-card exposure and meets new PCI (payment card industry) compliance requirements. With VC–Administration and the Payment Services office, IST led technical outreach, education, and conversion efforts to assist more than 40 campus units to convert from the IST-developed e-commerce system to an outsourced CyberSource solution. This will minimize regulatory liabilities for UC Berkeley's nearly $150M e-commerce transactions per year, and will allow for rapid, cost-effective adoption of emerging payment technologies in the future.
Application Services and the System and Network Security (SNS) group continued to work together to protect the personal data of students, staff, and faculty. Protection efforts took place on several fronts.
- A new security assessment methodology was developed in partnership with the I School, which is now in use by UC Berkeley's Audit and Advisory Services office.
- The procurement cycle scanning program, which includes a component to educate campus units to incorporate security scans of vendor products during the sales cycle, was rolled out to the campus. In this program, SNS will scan web application products before purchase to determine if there are possible vulnerabilities in the software that could be exploited by malicious users.
- RDM priority scans, with remediation guidance, was implemented. Here, SNS performs security scans to audit registered applications containing restricted data.
- The IBM Rational AppScan service was launched. This service, offered free of charge to campus departments, allows developers to use the state-of-the-art application vulnerability scanner to test programs for security vulnerabilities.
- The widely attended campus Security Special Interest Group (Security SIG) meetings were regularly hosted by SNS.
AppScan information:
App Scan contact: Kate Riley,
RDM contacts: Allison Henry,
Karl Grose,
Student course wins Virtual Learning Prize from New Media Consortium
The New Media Consortium recently selected Second Life DeCal, a UC Berkeley student-run class, for the 2008 Virtual Learning Prize ($5000). Designed and run by undergraduate students as part of the Program for Democratic Education at Cal (DeCal), this course, offered in fall 2008, explores the use of 3D virtual environments for representing ongoing archaeological investigations. Students examine questions about real, virtual, and imaginary worlds as they learn about Çatalhöyük, a 9000-year-old Neolithic settlement, located in present-day Turkey. The class has access to archaeological research data and an international team of scholars led by UC Berkeley anthropology professor Ruth Tringham.
This class builds upon several semesters of work by students, faculty, and staff to construct virtual models and public archaeology programs on Okapi Island in Second Life. Co-managed by Open Knowledge and the Public Interest (OKAPI) and Berkeley's Department of Anthropology, Okapi Island offers 65,000 square meters of virtual real estate for exploring new forms of research, education, and public outreach.
DeCal Course information
Visit Okapi Island
About Okapi Island
Student lead: Niema Razavian,
Faculty sponsor: Ruth Tringham,
Technical advisor: Noah Wittman,
Student systems
The hub of the student systems replacement effort revolves around Kuali Student. Major milestones were met on the Kuali Student architecture, use cases, and service definitions and contracts. Alignment work with Kuali Rice for infrastructure was started, beginning with identity management. Application design work for the Learning Unit Module (LUM) was initiated and is currently under development. Kuali LUM specifications have included input from the College of Letters and Science, the College of Engineering, and subject matter experts from colleges and departments throughout the campus. Learning Units will allow the campus to redefine the term "course" to be fully inclusive of all learning opportunities, including such opportunities as research and internships.
Student Systems 2012 efforts include replacing the Financial Aid Office's legacy mainframe SAMS (Student Aid Management System) with ProSAM, an upgraded, non-mainframe version, whose deployment is scheduled for January 2010. Completed work includes: governance in place; signing of contracts with the vendor (Sigma Systems, Inc.); conversion of the financial aid database from DB2 to Oracle and upload of production data into the development environment; redesign of the primary ID key in ProSAM to use Student ID (SID) rather than Social Security Number (SSN); and the development of new functionalities.
Student Systems 2012 began an RFP process to replace the campus central classroom scheduling system that will also include enhanced analytics for room utilization. The RFP is expected to go out to bid this winter for implementation next year (2009–10).
Student Systems 2012 director: David Scronce,
Kuali project manager: Tim Heidinger,
Kuali technical contact: JR Schulden,
ProSAM project manager: Meg Fink,
ProSAM technical contact: George Suennen,
Scheduling project manager: Walter Wong,
Scheduling RFP contact: Jon Conhaim,