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Information Technology

2021-2025 Strategic Plan | Goals & Action Steps: Primary Goals

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Teaching & Learning

Continue to provide an adaptive, accessible, multi-modal IT ecosystem that:

  • Meets the university's current growth targets for on-campus and online education.
  • Engages students across disciplines, on campus and online, in active, deep learning.
  • Supports multiple types of instruction and interaction (e.g. in-person, online, team-based, blended) and a wide range of teaching and learning goals.

In collaboration with campus partners, provide tools, knowledge and resources that enable instructors to design, implement, and assess innovative, inclusive learning experiences and strengthen academic success based on the diverse needs of their students.

Teaching & Learning Action Steps

  • Foster a community of innovation that enables faculty to experiment with educational technologies and create new digital learning opportunities. Create a pipeline for disseminating successful educational technology experiments.
  • Support advanced, multi-modal course delivery and expand available instructional technologies in classrooms and online.
  • Ensure that learning platforms support anywhere-anytime-anyone teaching and learning for a diverse global community. Provide support for mobile learning, multimedia, social networking, and emerging forms of evaluation. Reinforce accessibility and inclusion standards for instructional technology tools and services. Complete the implementation of virtual desktop infrastructure to provide students with access to educational software on their own devices.
  • Participate in a campus-wide instructional innovation support program in collaboration with the Institute of Teaching Excellence and Faculty Development, Online Education, the UMass Libraries, and other campus units to provide instructors with streamlined access to digital pedagogy, content, technology platforms, and learning analytics for on-campus, online, and hybrid courses.

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Research & Engagement

With campus partners, provide the computing, storage, and data security infrastructure to conduct high-impact research and affirm UMass Amherst as a leading university in research and innovation for the public good.

Formulate and execute an integrated research support strategy through collaboration and facilitation. Drawing on our campus expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning, the strategy will include research computing infrastructure, research applications support, research data management, and consulting, with an eye to expanding access to relevant resources and programs across disciplines.

Research & Engagement Action Steps

  • Expand access to high-performance computing and data science computing for non-STEM, humanities, and social science disciplines outside of the traditional scope of data science, under the “Democratizing Data Science” initiative. Increase use of the Unity high-performance computing platform. 
  • Continue to build a sustainable and secure computing infrastructure for research and big data, leveraging campus network, regional, national, and cloud-based computing resources, including the Massachusetts High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC). Implement federated scientific workflows and a 100Gb research network. 
  • Take an ongoing, active role in the Research Data Management strategic plan (of the Research Council), including planning, executing, and evaluating relevant research data management services. Assess and increase the maturity of risk assessment and data management practices for research data. 
  • Develop an annual outreach and education plan building on UMass Amherst Information Technology’s partnerships with campus organizations including Research & Engagement, the Research Council, and UMass Libraries, as well as regional and national partnerships, projects, and programs (e.g., XSEDE, STRIDES, NESE, FABRIC) to advance UMass Amherst research. 

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Outreach

Provide responsive, flexible communication and collaboration tools, platforms, support, and policy input that enable multi-level external communications and effective internal communications in support of the university's strategic outreach and engagement goals.

Advance technology engagement and outreach through:

  • New and existing collaborations with other departments, campuses, educational institutions, and industry partners.
  • Flexible educational programming that develops technology competencies for the future.
  • Events and other communication strategies that foster dialogue, community building, and service excellence.

Outreach Action Steps

  • In collaboration with campus partners, support the development of a new campus web strategy and a digital communications policy that meets current institutional goals for outreach and engagement.
  • Continue to provide a robust portfolio of communication and collaboration tools that integrate multiple communication modalities, voice, video, messaging, and social networks via most devices.
  • Launch competency-based technology training program that enables our students, faculty, and staff to maintain a competitive edge in today's and tomorrow's higher education marketplace.
  • Expand community educational programming, including internship programs and K-12 outreach programs, that strengthen technology competencies in local communities and serve as potential recruitment pipelines.
  • Identify opportunities for new strategic technology alliances. Leverage existing collaborations and partnerships to improve efficiency and effectiveness of IT resources, services, and programs to the benefit of our students, faculty, and staff.
  • Facilitate dialogue between IT and the campus community in support of open communication, new collaborations, service excellence, and more effective resource allocation.

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Enterprise Solutions

Transform UMass Amherst into a next-generation data-enabled institution. In collaboration with other campus units, provide enterprise tools policies, and programs that support a data-driven approach in strategic, tactical, and operational decision-making.

  • Continue the implementation of enterprise strategic analytics platforms that enable campus units to make evidence-based decisions that have a direct impact on the student experience in the management of human, fiscal, and space resources.
  • Focus on integrating data and systems to prepare for next-generation enterprise IT. Integrate new applications and systems with existing enterprise infrastructure in response to new technologies or community needs.
  • Prioritize accessibility and usability in the selection of new enterprise systems to ensure the most positive and productive digital experience possible.

Formulate an active information assurance and risk management strategy that responds to current information security threats, regulatory requirements, and today's technology landscape, while also articulating its benefits to the campus community.

Enterprise Solutions Action Steps

  • Provide the technical, logistical, and support resources for the implementation of the Flagship Analytics platform. Expand capabilities for academic and learning analytics and reporting tools to advance student success as well as operational effectiveness outcomes.
  • As a campus-wide effort, design and implement a new data warehouse that integrates data across multiple systems, further streamlines reporting, and aims for agility, scalability, cost effectiveness, and effective analytics.
  • Continue the deployment of the Salesforce customer relationship management system for strategic marketing, recruitment, communications, and case management.
  • Grow the implementation of the ServiceNow IT service management platform across departments as a centralized solution for improved IT service delivery.
  • In partnership with University Analytics and Institutional Research and other campus units, develop a data governance framework in support of data sharing and distributed analysis. In collaboration with campus partners, formulate and promote a new information privacy framework; vet, launch, and execute a new privacy policy.
  • Complete the deployment of information security monitoring, vulnerability scanning, and endpoint management solutions as part of the campus risk management strategy. Upgrade firewall and virtual private networking infrastructure.
  • Use educational programming and awareness campaigns to highlight salient information security issues.