Information and Communications Technologies

(ICT) Strategic Plan: 2006 - 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................1 SETTING AND SCOPE........................................................................................................................................2

University Strategic Planning.....................................................................................................................2 The ICT Planning Pyramid.........................................................................................................................2 An Information-centric approach ...............................................................................................................3 Principles.....................................................................................................................................................3 Monash University IT Architecture ............................................................................................................4

RESEARCH ICT INFRASTRUCTURE ...................................................................................................................5 Overview .....................................................................................................................................................5 Strategic Initiative: E-Research programme.............................................................................................6 Strategic Initiative: Research Administration ............................................................................................7

EDUCATION ICT INFRASTRUCTURE ..................................................................................................................8 Overview .....................................................................................................................................................8 Strategic Initiative: Learning Management ...............................................................................................9 Strategic Initiative: Teaching and Learning Spaces...............................................................................10 Strategic Initiative: Educational Technology Innovation ........................................................................11

INTERNATIONAL ICT INFRASTRUCTURE ..........................................................................................................12 Overview ...................................................................................................................................................12

ADMINISTRATION ICT INFRASTRUCTURE ........................................................................................................13 Overview ...................................................................................................................................................13 Strategic Initiative: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) .....................................................................14 Strategic Initiative: Student Management System .................................................................................15

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT ICT INFRASTRUCTURE......................................................................................16 Overview ...................................................................................................................................................16 Strategic Initiative: Web technologies/Web strategy..............................................................................17 Strategic Initiative: Web technologies/Portal platform ...........................................................................18 Strategic Initiative: Management information/Business intelligence & KPI ..........................................19 Strategic Initiative: Workgroup Collaboration Support ...........................................................................20

ICT CORE INFRASTRUCTURE .........................................................................................................................21 Overview ...................................................................................................................................................21 Strategic Initiative: Data Centres.............................................................................................................22 Strategic Initiative: Cabled Data Network ...............................................................................................23 Strategic Initiative: Wireless Data Network.............................................................................................24 Strategic Initiative: Internet Services.......................................................................................................25 Strategic Initiative: Telephone Services..................................................................................................26 Strategic Initiative: Host Server Platforms ..............................................................................................27 Strategic Initiative: Data Storage Management......................................................................................28 Strategic Initiative: Workstation Infrastructure........................................................................................29 Strategic Initiative: Security......................................................................................................................30 Strategic Initiative: Application Integration..............................................................................................31 Strategic Initiative: Identity Management and Authentication Systems................................................32

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INTRODUCTION This document is the University Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Strategic Plan. This document is a considered response to the evolving University Strategic Planning methodology. It replaces the existing 2001 IT Strategic Base Plan, which has to date been a successful vehicle for driving improvements in ICT infrastructure and service delivery. The University Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Strategic Plan (this document) is part of a new University Information and Communications Technology (ICT) planning pyramid (see figure 1 on the following page). The structure of the pyramid has been designed to mesh in with the university’s new planning methodology and planning timelines. The university has a series of long-term direction statements (Monash 2025 – 20 years, and the Academic Plan – 5+5 years). This document addresses the first half of the Academic Plan time schedule (the next five years). This is for two reasons. Firstly, the pace of technological change is such that it would be difficult to try to plan further out than that. Secondly, the components of the Academic Plan are structured as two five year periods with an implied review step. Planning for ICT for the next five years is consistent with this. The document is focused on Information and Communications Technology Infrastructure. Infrastructure can be defined in many ways. Perhaps the most useful definition is that infrastructure is what is generally required in order for the university to function. Information and Communications Technology Infrastructure is a subset of this. Some ICT Infrastructure is largely invisible to most users, in the same way that electricity-generating capacity is to consumers. This includes areas such as server hosting, storage provision, and voice/data networks and many underpinning software systems. Other infrastructure is only visible to a small and specialized subset of the university community. This includes areas such as research administration, student management and enterprise resource planning (HR and Finance). Lastly, some infrastructure is a fundamental platform for everything the university does. Examples here include the collaboration environment and the components of the web strategy. This document summarises the most critical strategic activities (which are by no means all that is underway) in the ICT space using a new concise and business-focused format. This format: Provides an overview of the business driver for this strategic activity Outlines the benefits expected from investment in this area Identifies which stakeholders would be expected to provide leadership Lists the investments required over the life of the document (2006-2010) Summarises the status of activity so far. This document will be reviewed annually on a rolling five-year basis. Particular strategic initiatives will be added and subtracted as dictated by the changing strategic environment and priorities of the university. It is hoped that this new approach will be useful both to university senior decision makers and to those charged with managing ICT systems across the university. The Information Technology Services Division commends this document for consideration by the University.

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SETTING AND SCOPE University Strategic Planning

Figure 1 : University Planning Pyramid

Monash University has a well-organised and coherent planning structure, summarized in the planning pyramid. Most importantly, the various components of the Academic Plan now provide clear statements of direction for the research, education and international portfolios. The challenge for the service divisions is how best to respond to and support these statements of direction.

The ICT Planning Pyramid

Figure 2: ICT Planning Pyramid

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The ICT Planning Pyramid (Figure 2) has been designed to focus on applications and infrastructure and to complement the University Planning Pyramid, relating to its lower two layers. The ICT Planning Pyramid itself has a number of layers. At the top level is this ICT Strategic Plan. This is explicitly structured to respond to the identified priorities in the various components of the Academic Plan (research, education and international) and the activities that are necessary to support these (information management, administration, and infrastructure). Below these in turn sit the ITS Operational Plan and the ITS Departmental Plans. These shorter-term documents then drive individual staff performance plans. A number of ITS internal planning documents (Service Roadmaps, Portfolio Roadmaps, IT Risk Profile) feed into the planning framework and inform the resulting ICT Strategic Plan. The ability to deliver against the ICT Strategic Plan is strongly influenced by staff capacity across the university, the impact of shared services, the need to maintain existing services and IT governance arrangements.

An Information-centric approach

This ICT Strategic Plan takes an explicitly information-centric approach, based on the work of the information management steering committee. The Monash University Information Management Strategy was developed by a cross-university steering committee containing representatives of the major information stakeholders (ITS, Library, Records & Archives, University Planning, faculty managers, Faculty of Information Technology experts) and published in 2005. At the 2005 University Planning Conference, it was endorsed as one of the 2006 University Key Priorities.

The strategy emphasises the importance of information-centric technology solutions, focussed on the user and their information needs. Figure 3 represents this diagrammatically. At the top is the user and their information needs. These are supported by services, delivered by applications, running on infrastructure. The Information Management Strategy deals primarily with the upper three levels of this figure. This ICT Strategic Plan deals with the lower two levels, and is focussed on the applications and infrastructure.

The strategy also divides the activity of the University into a number of realms. The three most significant realms are research, education and administration. These are major sections in this ICT Strategic Plan. This plan also picks up some of the most critical information management implementation activities.

Figure 3: Info-centric technology

Principles

The deployment of ICT Infrastructure is guided by two sets of principles.

Information Management Principles These principles are taken from the Monash University Information Management Strategy (http://www.monash.edu.au/staff/information-management/). They define how information is managed at the university, and are focused on the content, not the systems. Note that principle 10 implies the need for the information management principles to determine the deployment of ICT. 1. Corporate importance

Information is a valued resource and Monash's strategic and operational plans define how it should be used and managed.

2. Information sources Because we manage information, it can be easily found, and its source reliably identified.

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3. User-centeredness The information services and systems at Monash are designed and provided with the needs of users in mind.

4. Availability Information is available to anybody, anytime, anywhere and anyhow as appropriate.

5. Staff and student development We continuously improve our skills in working with information.

6. Productivity and efficiency Because we manage information, we are more productive as a community.

7. Statutory requirements The way we manage information complies with legal and administrative requirements.

8. Trustworthy information and systems Monash information is relevant, accurate and timely.

9. Retention and disposal We keep the right information for Monash and the wider community.

10. Information and technology Our information needs are supported by our Information and Communication Technology services and systems.

IT Architecture Principles These principles are described more fully in the Monash University IT Architecture (http://www.its.monash.edu.au/staff/plans/architecture/). They define the desired characteristics of the systems that manage information, as well as the infrastructure that underpins those systems. 1. University strategic objectives guide IT decisions. 2. Systems are secure. 3. Designs target high availability and reliability. 4. Systems safeguard privacy and intellectual property. 5. Systems use the authoritative source for data. 6. Open Standards are used where possible. 7. Platform-independent user environments are globally accessible. 8. Purchased software is preferred to in-house development. 9. Standard products and platforms are adopted to limit diversity. 10. Applications share hardware platforms. 11. Systems are structured for easy extension. 12. Management of systems is easy to devolve.

Monash University IT Architecture

The Monash University IT Architecture (MITA) was first published in 2004 and was revised in 2005. At its most basic level, MITA is a framework to identify and reuse successful technology and process patterns (across the division and the University). The architecture is based on recommendations from The Open Group Architecture Framework. It includes a business architecture, an information architecture, and application architecture, and a technical infrastructure architecture. Each of these in turn has a series of subsections defining standards to be followed. The architecture aims to deliver three benefits. One is to identify “win-win” opportunities that will in turn result in reduced work by ICT staff through removing duplication or inefficiency in the provision of ICT systems. Another is to generate increased reuse of technology through improved communication and collaboration. The third is to enable the IT services to respond more quickly to changes in university information requirements. A process for the ongoing maintenance of MITA is being put in place at present, as well as a communication strategy to publicise it widely within the university. This ICT Strategic Plan draws together all four ‘architectures’ in arriving at its recommended strategic initiatives. Compliance with the Monash University IT Architecture will also be critical to the success of these initiatives as they are rolled out.

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RESEARCH ICT INFRASTRUCTURE Overview

A primary goal of Monash is to be a leading research-intensive university. High quality ICT infrastructure is key to this strategy. In particular, Monash seeks to improve its research performance through the more effective harnessing and application of ICT technologies. At the same time, DEST is working to improve the sector’s research productivity through the adoption of a national e-Research strategy; by improving the accessibility and preservation of research data and information; and through the improved management of research activities and resources for research through the adoption of the Research Quality Framework (RQF). Monash is commissioning an array of medical and micro imaging systems during the planning horizon. Nearby the Australian Synchrotron comes on-stream in the same period. All of these major new instruments will generate research data at unprecedented rates. The strength and calibre of Monash’s Library, IT Services Division and Faculty of IT, and the reputation of key senior staff in those areas has placed Monash in a key position to contribute to the leadership of Australia’s national e-Research initiative. In 2005 the University established the Monash e-Research Centre to further these aims and activities, the first such centre of its kind in Australia. In so doing the University has indicated the increasing importance and priority for funding of ICT support for Monash’s research programme. The University’s strategy for ICT infrastructure in support of Monash University’s research programme is in five parts:

Researcher-centric tools, applications, support and advice Provide professional ICT consulting and specialized support services for research by placing ICT professionals to work directly alongside key researchers. Provide a place/resource for researchers to turn to obtain specialist ICT support and advice. Develop discipline-specific ICT tools and applications. Develop an easy-to-use one-stop-shop environment where all the tools and facilities a researcher needs are all in one place (researchers’ desktop or portal).

Information repository, cataloguing and curation systems Develop and provide information management systems and tools to facilitate the cataloguing, searching, archival and curation of research databases, information and publications.

Research collaboration Develop and provide systems and tools to enable researchers to collaborate across institutions and disciplines; share access to research data in a secure and controlled manner; workgroup collaboration systems and communications services; access to distributed and remote ICT and computational facilities, databases and scientific instruments; including federated identity management systems.

Physical infrastructure Provide high capacity and integrated central ICT infrastructure (network, storage and compute) capacity and integrate with local departmental compute and storage systems.

Management information systems Continue to improve the various administrative, record keeping, statistics and tracking systems and processes that support the management and administration of Monash’s research programme. A particular focus for 2006-2007 is to develop tools to administer the RQF. The business intelligence strategic initiative, including the development of a Business Intelligence Strategy (see p. 19), is a key component of this.

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Strategic Initiative: E-Research programme

Monash is well placed to contribute to the leadership of, and to benefit from, the development and implementation of Australia’s national e-Research strategy. This strategy seeks to improve research performance through the improved use of ICT; improved research collaboration across disciplines and and institutions; and improved access to distributed and remote ICT facilities, databases and scientific instruments. The Monash e-Research initiative has been created to complement and extend national initiatives in this area. e-Research at Monash will facilitate the development and provision of the following e-Research infrastructure and services: Information management and curation: Research data repository and information management

and curation services (ARROW (http://arrow.edu.au/), DART (http://dart.edu.au/) and ARCHER (http://archer.edu.au/) projects)

Embedded ICT professionals working directly with researchers: Researcher-centric ICT tools, custom applications and consulting and support services; one-stop-shop researchers’ desktop environment (MeRP and VeRSI projects)

Grid middleware suite: Software environment to support research collaboration and harnessing of distributed ICT facilities and databases; including federated identity management, authentication and authorization systems

Physical infrastructure: Integration of departmental and central compute and storage facilities, together with the provision of large central research data store and compute capability (MCG, MSG and LaRDS projects)

Benefits Improve Monash’s research output through

improved use of ICT Improve research collaboration across

disciplines and institutions locally nationally and internationally

Improve the accessibility and preservation of research data

Reduce incidence of lost data and reduce cost by providing improved central data storage and information management/curation services

Support an array of medical and micro imaging facilities currently being established around Monash

Improve productivity of Monash researchers by providing ICT professionals to work directly with researchers (improve effective utilization of ICT facilities; develop discipline-specific custom applications; provide advice, training and professional consulting services)

Improve accessibility of ICT tools to Monash researchers

Maximize benefits to Monash research flowing from the Australian Synchrotron.

Proposed leadership Deputy Vice Chancellor Research e-Research Steering Committee Director, e-Research Centre Manager, e-Research Centre Executive Director, ITS Director Infrastructure Services, ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources External funds:

• DEST (ARROW+ARROW2): $8M • DEST (DART+ARCHER): $7.8M • DEST (LIEF 2006+2007): $0.5M • MMV (VeRSI): $2.4M.

Monash funds: • Strategic Initiatives: $2M • MeRC (total over 3 years): $1.8M.

Status to date (June 2006) ARROW implemented and in use MSG central compute facility

commissioned 2005; and 2006 hardware expansion works complete

LaRDS research data store: 60 TB disk and SAN commissioned

MCG concept and steering committee formed

MeRP concept and steering committee formed

DART in progress VeRSI proposal accepted and funded ARROW2 and ARCHER proposals

approved LIEF2007 proposal submitted.

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Strategic Initiative: Research Administration

High quality administrative, management and information systems are key to Monash’s strategy to be a leading research-intensive university. This project builds on two complementary developments. The first is the advances that have been made in the last 2 years developing new administrative functions. The second are the systems and procedures that support the university’s researchers as well as their supporting administration staff. The work scheduled for the planning horizon is a compilation of initiatives including systems and data integration developments to support the RQF, removal of inappropriate database and spreadsheet usage, business intelligence reporting on research data and the further development of profiling software. This profiling software can then be utilised to pre-populate administrative forms which in turn contain in-built workflows. This should speed up the application processes for a number of university research systems.

Benefits Reliable, high quality information on

research performance at an individual, department/school, faculty and university level

Increase in research funding and collaborative research projects by providing a consistent and useable interface to prospective research partners

Contribute to an overall improvement in the Monash image

Increase in research funding due to ability to model RQF information more easily than competitors

Reduction in academic time spent on bureaucratic requirements, and therefore more time for core academic and research related business

Improved facilities for the entry, maintenance and retrieval of data

More timely production of reports Large reduction time and effort in keying

research related data Minimisation or elimination of large

amounts of double-handling of data Reduction in the amount of time spent by

researchers on completing administration forms

Less time spent by researchers in finding out the resources and expertise within the university that relates to proposed research activities.

Leadership Research Administration Steering

Committee Director Research Services Pro-Vice Chancellor Research and

Research Training Executive Director, ITS Director Applications Services, ITS.

Estimated Investments/Funding Sources 2007: $448K Strategic Initiatives fund 2008: Possible replacement of RM4 with

InfoEd software: up to $5M from the Strategic Initiatives Fund

2007 - 2008: Implementation of the BI Strategy (cost to be determined)

2009: ongoing costs absorbed into operational and production budgets of V-P Research and ITS Division

Ongoing work to develop and maintain appropriate standards and procedures relating to systems administration and support (cost to be determined).

Status to Date (June 2006) ROPES system developed and operational Animal Ethics module implemented on

RM4 RQF Information system developed and

operational Work commenced on replacing MRGS

Access databases with Application Express programs linked to Callista

Work commenced on Staff Profiling system.

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EDUCATION ICT INFRASTRUCTURE Overview

The vision for the Monash Education portfolio is to provide students with a rich and diverse online learning environment that augments the traditional learning context. The my.monash portal provides a unified point of access to a comprehensive suite of web-based learning resources, materials and activities including the Monash University Studies Online (MUSO) environment. Teaching staff will have access to a suite of online teaching tools which will support a strategic diversity of pedagogical approaches. The 2006 review of the MUSO environment made a number of recommendations about the future of the service. The enterprise learning management system will be augmented with a suitable and appropriate range of systems which in combination will support innovative, but proven, approaches to facilitate the student’s achievement of their learning objectives. There are a number of central service providers from across the university which together provide the following: lecture notes – in downloadable transcript and in various audio and video formats (for example;

streaming, pod-casting); activities – the variety of learning material creation tools enable both learner directed and teacher

directed activities which can be delivered in various formats (from simple discussion and report, replaying a ‘whiteboard’ based illustration, through to instructional video and interactive ‘learning’ games) to cater for differing learning styles;

self assessment tools – enabling students to gain an understanding of their grasp on material, predominantly via quizzes and tests;

reading lists – provided predominantly via the Library, and contributed to by individual academics, these resources point students in the direction of further online information relating to specific topics; and,

discussion/collaboration forums (inclusive of presence and chat) – enabling students to capitalise on the diversity of Monash’s globally located and connected students, their experiences and perspectives.

Multi-faceted contributions from students irrespective of campus/study location will be greatly facilitated as a result of the implementation of the forthcoming enterprise collaboration suite – enabling secure and simple mechanisms for students to discuss and debate issues, to create group assignments and to participate in the social elements of learning – the cornerstone of Monash’s unique learning experience. Incorporation of additional learning elements will be dependent upon both innovation in technology and creativity in the cost effective application of this technology. Elements will be selected for evaluation against pedagogical and IT architectural criteria, and those deemed successful will then be progressively resourced and deployed. Where appropriate, MUSO will be integrated with various other corporate systems (student information system, timetabling system, mailing lists and the like) to bring about efficiencies in the administration, creation and maintenance of teaching activities. In support of the traditional learning context, learning venues on all Monash campuses will continue to be maintained and the ICT replaced and/or upgraded in response to prevailing teaching and learning requirements. Mechanisms and processes to evaluate the efficacy and quality of teaching activities and the systems that these depend upon will be regularly conducted (via the unit evaluation process) and strategic and targeted improvements and refinements will be undertaken.

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Strategic Initiative: Learning Management

The goal of the Learning Management strategic initiative is to continue to provide students and staff with a quality online environment through which learning and teaching activities can be conducted. During the 2006 – 2010 timeframe it is intended that the Monash University Studies Online (MUSO) service will broaden under the direction of the Learning Management Steering Committee, to include a comprehensive and complementary suite of Learning Management Systems (LMS) within Monash. Currently, the enterprise LMS in use is the Blackboard product, WebCT Vista. Additionally there are a number of niche products in use at Monash including InterLearn, LEX, Walkabout and the my.monash unit pages. Activities anticipated in the learning management space within the 2006 – 2010 timeframe include: the establishment of guidelines to facilitate a watching brief on alternate enterprise LMS (this is a

risk mitigation strategy in order to provide a viable exit strategy from the Blackboard product); consideration/evaluation of the various LMS products currently in use within Monash with the

overall aim of incorporating these into one coherent MUSO service; and, planning, evaluation and execution of regularly (once every 18 months for the foreseeable future)

scheduled upgrades to the enterprise LMS.

Benefits the provision of a unified online education

environment – making it easier and simpler for students to participate in learning activities and making a wider range of educational tools available for staff to deploy as appropriate.

Proposed leadership Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor Director, Centre for the Advancement of

Learning and Teaching Educational Technology sub-committee of

Education Committee Learning Management System Steering

Committee Executive Director, ITS Director Applications Services, ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2007: additional operational funding of

$779K in order to continue operating the WebCT Vista product and $510K Strategic Initiative funding for the planning and pilot of version 4 of Vista.

2008: ongoing operational expenditure from ITS Operational budget and $380K in capital funding to roll-out Vista 4 across the organisation

2009: as above 2010: as above.

Status to date (June 2006) Roll-out of the enterprise LMS project

complete with all objectives met Establishment of the Education

Technology sub-committee of the Education Committee to oversee and drive Learning Management initiatives

MUSO Review complete.

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Strategic Initiative: Teaching and Learning Spaces

The university conducts in the order of 70,000 teaching sessions per year in a variety of centrally timetabled and managed teaching spaces. To provide a contemporary and high quality teaching and learning experience, it is important that teaching spaces are designed with appropriate educational technology equipment. There are 160 centrally managed and 110 Faculty owned teaching spaces at Australian campuses fitted out with educational technology infrastructure and a further 260 smaller teaching spaces (excluding specialist labs etc). This investment in educational technology is managed through a consultative process by the ITS Teaching Facilities Support Unit. In the past 5 years, there has been a considerable increase in demand for technology enabled smaller teaching spaces, and the construction of new buildings such as Building H at Caulfield. There are significant annual maintenance costs of refreshing the educational technology across the entire stock of teaching spaces (the total investment in teaching spaces at Australian campuses over the last 3 years has been over $5M). There is a 3-5 year (average of 4 years) refurbishment cycle to refresh technology components of teaching spaces eg, data projectors, lecterns. Infrastructure related costs such as cabling and electrical wiring also need to be included to ensure that these teaching spaces are maintained at an acceptable standard. In addition to these teaching spaces, the university is also progressively developing learning commons (sometimes referred to as learning spaces). These spaces are a collaborative initiative between ITS and the Library to provide flexible locations which enable collaborative learning, supported through co-located student service desks.

Benefits Assists in the provision of a high quality

learning experience by ensuring high quality teaching spaces are fitted out with appropriate educational technology

Maintains the stock of teaching spaces to a contemporary standard in a planned and consultative way

Encourages efficiency of usage of teaching spaces.

Assists provision of Monash Lectures on Line.

Provides for assistive hearing technology in teaching spaces.

Proposed leadership Campus Directors and Managers Executive Director, ITS Director Client Services, ITS Managers, Facilities and Services at each

campus Consultative groups already established at

most campuses.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2006 - $400K ITS Budget 2006 - $170K Minor Works budget 2006 - $850K Capital Works 2007 - $400K ITS Budget 2008 - $450K ITS Budget 2009 - $450K ITS Budget 2010 - $500K ITS Budget.

Status to date (June 2006) Building H at Caulfield completed. In future

expect to include maintenance in ITS expenditure

Berwick – 5 teaching spaces refurbished Caulfield – 5 teaching spaces refurbished Clayton – 16 teaching spaces refurbished Gippsland – 3 teaching spaces refurbished Peninsula – 1 teaching space refurbished 15-20 teaching spaces still to be

refurbished in 2006 Learning Commons operational at

Berwick; further spaces planned for Malaysia and South Africa.

.

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Strategic Initiative: Educational Technology Innovation

The university has been at the forefront of innovation in the use of educational technologies. Our university wide adoption of WebCT Vista (branded as Monash University Studies Online) is one example of this. Another is the extremely successful Monash Lectures Online (http://www.mulo.monash.edu.au/) which is a recorded lecture service piloted by ITS and now hosted by Monash University Library to deliver digital audio recordings of lectures to Monash University students via the Internet. There are a range of trends that require continued innovative strategic responses. One of these is improvements in educational technologies, which are likely to continue over the planning timeframe and beyond. Another is the increasing expectations of each new student intake, based on their school experience or exposure through the Internet to related technologies. A third is the university’s emphasis on student mobility and international exchanges. A fourth is a move towards more collaborative and media-rich learning preferences and styles. One of the responses is around governance. The Education Committee of Academic Board has just established an Educational Technology Sub-Committee which will be developing an Educational Technology Framework. This group will also be encouraging examples of best practice which will be mainstreamed where they are successful. The university has also developed a Student Experience Framework, to support the goals in this space that were identified in Monash Directions 2025. Another response is to trial and (if successful deploy) new educational technologies. The Educational Technologies strategic initiative consists of a number of inter-related activities that together will advance the delivery of educational content and experiences. These current and future activities include: Tele-teaching across campuses Trialling e-Portfolios for students Proposed extensions to Monash Lectures Online, including:

o MP3 downloading o podcasting

Pharmacy pilot implementation of the iLecture system which delivers integrated slides, audio, video and notes

Desktop video-conferencing for remote students Support for student mobility, including trialling delivery to mobile phones/PDAs Trialling in-class polling technologies (using wireless keypads).

Benefits Assists in the provision of a high quality

learning experience Supports the distributed Monash by

providing educational experiences delivered at one campus to other campuses

Provides a better experience for off-campus students

Supports student mobility.

Proposed leadership Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor Director, Centre for the Advancement of

Learning and Teaching (CALT) Educational Technology Sub-Committee of

Education Committee Executive Director, ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources To be determined.

Status to date (June 2006) Pharmacy iLecture pilot scheduled for

2007 MP3 download and podcasting trials

underway, to be reviewed late this year.

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INTERNATIONAL ICT INFRASTRUCTURE Overview

Monash University has just approved its International Plan, consisting of a discussion paper and an international matrix. The plan identifies four key objectives: 1. Optimise the research, learning and teaching, community engagement and financial benefits from

our international partnerships 2. Optimise the research, learning and teaching, community engagement, and financial benefits from

our international campus and centre footprint 3. Enhance our research profile through new international presences 4. Foster the culture of internationalism amongst the broader Monash community The strategic initiatives identified elsewhere in this strategic plan already respond to priorities in the areas of research, and learning and teaching. But there are specific requirements identified in the discussion paper that also require an ICT Infrastructure response. The discussion paper emphasizes the importance of ‘One Monash’. ICT Infrastructure and services need to be developed and provided in such a way as to deliver a consistent set of services to Monash staff and students wherever they are located within ‘One Monash’. A number of the infrastructure initiatives in this strategic plan relate directly to this, including improved network capacity between campuses. Monash University South Africa will be increasing its link capacity outside the campus, and pursuing a connection to TENET (the local higher education network). It will also be reconfiguring local network equipment and introducing extranet traffic management to better utilize existing link capacity. Monash University Malaysia will also be increasing capacity on its external network connection. Another requirement in the discussion paper is to provide opportunities for those who are less mobile due to family commitments or financial constraints for ‘virtual international experiences’ through ICT. This will require as a minimum improved video-conferencing. An innovative approach that might also be trialled is a network of web-enabled cameras at different Monash campuses to provide a sense of activity across the university system. The draft International Plan matrix identifies the need to improve the efficiency of staff communication between campuses and centres international partners, increase the frequency and quality of e-communication between campuses and centres, and to develop good quality e-learning connectivity capacity between the campuses. This will require a greater emphasis on high-quality video-conferencing (to replace the need for short duration trips between campuses), and on tele-teaching and desktop video-conferencing. These are also flagged elsewhere in this strategic plan, and will depend on investments in network infrastructure and a move towards Voice-over-IP (VOIP) technologies. In short, much of the infrastructure required to support the new international directions is either being put in place or is already in the planning stage. As the international strategy is fine-tuned, ITS will ensure that it responds to further align with its requirements.

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ADMINISTRATION ICT INFRASTRUCTURE Overview

Some applications have become so necessary to critical operations that they are now considered part of the infrastructure. SAP for financial, human resource and asset management is one, as is Callista for academic and student administration. The effective use of information technology in support of the administrative functions of the University involves developing and nurturing partnerships with administrative information owners and providers. These partnerships allow us to blend leading commercial software with institution specific applications to meet the administrative needs of the University. SAP was implemented in 1999 and Callista in 2000. Since then a number of related applications have been acquired or developed including;

• research administration • timetabling and class booking • flexible learning support systems for off-campus learning, • course and unit publications • student load planning and monitoring and • core business evaluations.

These related applications depend to a large extent on the accuracy and currency of information in the SAP and Callista systems. These integrated administrative applications are thus central to the successful operation of core university functions. Application integration and cross-application reporting are key issues for 2006 and beyond. Work has commenced on replacing the legacy ‘point to point’ data-dependent application interfaces with a contemporary solution based on information integration driven by business processes. This strong base in our transaction-based systems will serve us well into the next decade, with the focus now turning to reporting the information they contain for tactical and strategic purposes. The business intelligence initiative launched in 2006 will produce a three to five year roadmap for harvesting and presenting critical information for decision support.

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Strategic Initiative: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Monash implemented SAP R/3 ERP software for financial and human resource/payroll administration in 1999 to address the risks posed by Y2k and GST. Since the initial implementation of core product to replace the legacy systems there has been a steady roll-out of new business functionality now extending into asset administration and employee self-services. Monash has remained within mainstream vendor support and has leveraged the financial investment to date by upgrading the R/3 system in 2002, and in 2006 is at the forefront of implementing SAP functionality and technology by migrating to SAP’s contemporary ERP solution, mySAP ERP. The mySAP ERP licence gives Monash access to a full range of functionality not available in R/3, such as Strategic Enterprise Management (strategic planning and simulation, business consolidation), Corporate Services (real estate and travel management) and self service for financial and line managers. mySAP is a packaged business solution designed to automate, integrate and standardise business processes, share common data and provide real-time access to information. Support for mySAP extends to at least 2012, meaning Monash will not have to revisit ERP market offerings for at least five years.

Benefits Support for range of finance, HR/payroll

and self-service functions until at least 2012

Ease of expansion /growth and increased flexibility offered by mySAP licence

Strategically leverages Monash’s investment through implementation of second wave functionality

Streamlines transaction processing through introduction of employee and manager self-service and workflow applications.

Proposed leadership Vice President Administration Vice President Finance and CFO Executive Director, ITS Director Applications Services, ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2006: $1.3M of IT Capital funding for

licence conversion and mySAP implementation costs, $725k of Operating costs

2007 – 2008: ongoing costs absorbed into Operating/Production budgets of ITS, CFD, FiRM, HR and end-user organisation units

2009 – 2010: Hardware replacement scheduled, estimated $250K of capital funding.

Status to date (June 2006) SAP/Monash Licence and Support

Agreement re-negotiated SAP Upgrade Review completed (with

recommendations for migration and expansion)

Business Process Teams, Change Management and Technical Teams operating

Infrastructure landscape for at least next 3 years established and operational

MySAP ERP software installed and Upgrade Project commenced.

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Strategic Initiative: Student Management System

An effective student administration system is an essential component of the university administration processes. The current student system, Callista, was selected in 1999 and implemented over two years. Its current license and support contract expires in 2009. The university will need to decide before then whether to renew the contract or implement an alternate system. Given the two year implementation period the ideal time for the vendor selection and contract negotiation processes would be 2007. The final phase of DEST (Department of Education, Science and Training) reforms will be undertaken in 2007. This will require changes to both the Callista systems and the Web Enrolment System. In addition Monash will need to comply with other government reporting systems such as the Centrelink Academic Reassessment Transformation (CART) system in the near future. During 2006 Monash is evaluating the Callista Connect system that provides self-service functionality via the web to students and staff. It is expected that some modules of the Connect system will be implemented at Monash such as the fees module, online admissions access for prospective students and agents and enhanced course progression reporting.

Benefits Provide robust and effective student

administration for the university Minimise the risk to the university Minimise cost Compliance with Government reporting

requirements Web based functionality for fees,

admissions, and course progression.

Proposed leadership Vice President Administration Divisional Director, Student and

Community Services Division Executive Director, ITS Director Applications Services, ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2007: $525K from Strategic Initiative fund 2008-2009: Possible implementation of

another student system from Capital budget. The investment is in the range range $15M – $25M.

Status to date (June 2006) Higher Education Support Act

implementation almost complete Callista Connect evaluation begun.

16

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT ICT INFRASTRUCTURE Overview

Monash University faces a number of information-related challenges as it continues to move into the 21st Century:

• growth in the volume and complexity of information upon which the university depends • an increasing number of information islands and information-centric applications • convergence in digital content and media.

Information resources are as important as the university's other key assets – human, physical, and financial. We have systems and structures in place to manage these key assets but our systems and structures for managing information resources need attention. In order to excel the University needs to improve the quality of its information management. The implementation of the Monash University Information Management Strategy will be supported by a communication plan as well as a work plan that is structured around four themes.

Working with information efficiently and effectively This group of activities seeks to assist staff and students to improve their ability in working with information. Particular sub-themes are staff development, classification, document and records management, repositories and search and discovery. A 2006 funded project is well underway, tackling some of the challenges in this space.

Delivering information and services to users using web technologies This group of activities serves the delivery of online information and services, building on the existing progress Monash has made in using web technologies. Particular sub-themes are the roles of the public web, intranet technologies and solutions, and web content management. Two of the proposed ICT strategic initiatives described below come under this theme: the web strategy and the portal platform.

Providing high quality management information This group of activities seeks to provide managers with the information they need to make effective decisions. Particular sub-themes are integration across applications, business intelligence/reporting, and data quality. The proposed ICT strategic initiative dealing with management information, business intelligence and KPI reporting comes under this theme.

Supporting collaborative activity Collaboration is fundamental to everything the university does. This group of activities seeks to enable improved ways of working together through better technology support. The sub-themes for this activity here are the deployment of the new collaboration offering (see separate strategic initiative on p. 20) and its relationship with other information management services.

17

Strategic Initiative: Web technologies/Web strategy

Through a broad consultative process combined with industry research, a university-wide web strategy was developed in 2005 and published in early 2006. The web strategy states that the university's web presence must “Attract, support and retain staff, students and partners most likely to help Monash in the attainment of its strategic goals, in the most cost-effective manner.” The strategy represents a major shift in the university’s web presence, separating public (external-facing) and intranet (internal-facing) content and focuses on user needs and activities rather than on institutional information silos. This implementation project will facilitate that effort, working with content publishers to categorise and place information for best effect for various target audiences. The new web presence is expected to provide significant improvements in engaging with external and internal communities, providing real staff savings through increased productivity and increased revenue This is a two-year project. During the first phase, the Monash public web presence will be redeveloped and internally focused content will be moved to a separate university intranet. During the second phase the intranet will be further refined to target specific roles, functions and workgroups. Existing IT infrastructure such as the Web Content Management System, user authentication systems and the my.monash portal will be used to develop and deliver the new Monash web presence. All intranet content will be accessed via the my.monash portal allowing Monash users to seamlessly navigate across all relevant content from a single login.

Benefits Streamlined public web site will:

o better position Monash to attract the leading undergraduate and postgraduate students, and leading research, teaching and general staff

o better position Monash to engage with partners and benefactors

Redeveloped public web site will showcase key areas such as research achievements and advancement / marketing campaigns

Separation of public and intranet content will: o make relevant information easier to

locate o improve security for intranet content

Improved content maintenance and delivery processes will minimise unnecessary duplication of content and resources by allowing portions of content to be re-used in more than one place.

Proposed leadership Vice-President Advancement Web Steering Committee Information Management Steering

Committee Executive Director, ITS Director Applications Services, ITS Divisional Director, Student and

Community Services.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2007: Ongoing operational funding of

$550K for the Content Management System

2008: Phase 1 rollout of Web Strategy $1.05M from IT Capital Development budget, plus $550K for ongoing operational funding of Content Management System

2009: Stage 2 rollout of Web Strategy $908K from IT Capital Development budget, plus $550K for ongoing operational funding of Content Management System

2010: Ongoing operations expenditure on Web Strategy $202K from ITS Operational budget, plus $550K for ongoing operational funding of Content Management System.

Status to date (June 2006) Content Management System

implemented in most faculties and divisions with completion of the rollout on target for December 2006

Web Strategy developed and endorsed by Information Management Steering Committee

Successfully piloted Content Management System to my.monash portal integration.

18

Strategic Initiative: Web technologies/Portal platform

The Portal Platform strategic initiative is centred on ensuring that the tools and technologies employed to deliver the University’s my.monash enterprise portal enable sustainable growth in the use of the portal, particularly with respect to the portal’s capacity to underpin the Monash Web Strategy. Activities anticipated within the 2006 – 2010 timeframe include: the establishment of guidelines and the accompanying resourcing to facilitate a meaningful

watching brief on alternate enterprise portal products; conducting a proof of suitability exercise with the Oracle portal engine; and, subsequent to successful evaluation, trial, review, implement and migrate to the Oracle portal

engine framework.

Benefits It is anticipated that standardisation on

international portal standards (e.g., JSR168) will enable an ease and agility of integration with the portal products of other enterprise applications (such as mySAP) and confer flexibility in portlet development

Provides an underpinning infrastructure item to facilitate the Monash Web Strategy.

Proposed leadership my.monash Steering Committee Executive Director, ITS Director Applications Services, ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2008: capital funding requested to conduct

a proof of suitability exercise with the preferred portal engine $530K

2009 - 2010: pending successful proof of suitability and development of implementation plan; commence migration to preferred portal engine (estimated cost $2M over two years - planned to be sought from capital sources).

Status to date (June 2006) Completed a preliminary review of “off the

shelf” portal products for which Monash currently has a licence

Oracle portal engine shortlisted for further review.

19

Strategic Initiative: Management information/Business intelligence & KPI

The availability of timely, accurate and meaningful data that can be manipulated and presented in a customized manner has been widely discussed for a number of years. Of paramount importance is the ability to report across multiple applications, so that a single view at different levels of the organization can incorporate HR, Financial, Student, Research and other information sources, including external sources. A number of recent initiatives (TARDIS, ROPES, University KPI Reporting and Course and Unit Profiling) have broken ground in this area. Data has been sourced from SAP, Callista, ResearchMaster, DEST/GCCA submissions and national collections, and has been presented as a single dataset for the purposes of reporting status and performance against both internal and external targets. This has subsequently led to an ongoing exercise to resolve the integrity issues surrounding multiple sources of data and has identified many areas where business processes can be improved. Monash is piloting Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) software for its application integration needs. BPEL can, amongst other things, populate a data repository and provide enterprise wide definitions of data in a data dictionary that can be used in University-wide and local reporting (i.e. faculty, division, department, etc). The data repository holds copies of transactional/non-transactional data that have been transformed in such a way that querying, reporting and other analyses become simple. The process of transforming operational and transactional data results in a consistent view of information by providing a single source of Monash and other data. Business Intelligence (BI) is a collection of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analysing and reporting data to help organisations make better decisions. Implementing the recommendations of the Business Intelligence Strategy will be an important step towards achieving seamless access to corporate information drawn from the University’s multiple sources. The proposed Business Intelligence Competence Centre (BICC) together with strong governance will address data quality and integrity issues university-wide.

Benefits Brings data from disparate sources into a

‘single version of the truth’ Provides easier access to corporate data Provides 360° view of customer (student )

information (enrolment, research, financial, etc)

Capability to improve business process through measuring and monitoring performance across a range of business activities

Supports simple queries and reports, OLAP and Data Mining concepts.

Proposed leadership Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor Pro Vice Chancellor Planning Pro Vice Chancellor Quality Deputy Vice Chancellor Research Vice President Administration Vice President Finance and CFO Executive Director, ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2007: $1.1M from Capital and $185K from

Operating funds to establish the Business Intelligence Competence Centre (BICC), the standards and tools; and to develop the first of the Information Release Projects – the Research Business Intelligence Office (includes provision for first-year support for portfolio activities)

2008: $655K from Capital and $178K from Operating/Production to support the BICC and expand the platform to accommodate subsequent integration activity

2009: $620K for continued support of BICC and significant hardware upgrade/replacement; $223K from Operating/Production funds

2010: Technology and environment support for the BICC and further integration activity absorbed into ITS operational/production budgets.

Status to date (September 2006) Business Intelligence Strategy complete.

20

Strategic Initiative: Workgroup Collaboration Support

Collaboration has been identified as a critical need by all sectors of the university: education, research and administration users. The current collaboration environment, selected in 1996, consists essentially of email and calendar. Since this environment was selected the available marketplace offerings have moved beyond just email and calendar towards what are called variously workgroup or enterprise collaboration suites. These integrated offerings provide shared document spaces, mobility support, instant messaging, presence awareness and web conferencing (in addition to email and calendar). During 2005, a review of work group and collaboration services was again undertaken at Monash. An extensive consultation process was conducted with the broader Monash community and the requirements for these services were determined. The ensuing tender and evaluation process resulted in the selection of the Lotus/SameTime collaboration suite from IBM. This collaboration solution now needs to be rolled out to the university. This process will involve the progressive rollout of the backend infrastructure, analysis of current collaboration practices, configuration of the new environment to support improved ways of working, and an active change management process to derive the best benefits for the university

Benefits Staff and students will be able to

collaborate more effectively, across multiple sites and time-zones

There will be an opportunity to use these facilities to design and deploy standard data flows and work practices, improving quality and efficiency of services

The need for staff to travel will diminish Monash staff who travel or work from

multiple locations will have the benefit of much more advanced methods to collaborate anywhere, anytime, and on a range of devices

Advanced collaboration services will make it much easier for researchers to participate in a wider range of research activities and relationships, regardless of location, or university affiliation

All students will benefit from improved functionality of services over what is currently available, making it easier to work in groups and to provide additional ways for academic staff to engage with students.

Proposed leadership Executive Director, ITS Director, e-Research Centre Chair, Education Technology Committee.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2006: Investigation, selection and licensing

of software $560K from IT Capital Development budget

2007: Stage 1 rollout $1.37M from Major Capital Works budget

2008: Stage 2 rollout $1.16M from Major Capital Works budget

2009: Ongoing operations expenditure $340K from ITS Operational budget

2010: Ongoing operations expenditure $340K from ITS Operational budget.

Status to date (June 2006) Software requirements identified Tenders evaluated Vendor selected for the new workgroup

collaboration environment.

21

ICT CORE INFRASTRUCTURE Overview

Infrastructure is the underlying foundation for the IT applications and services which support critical university processes. Upgrading and maintaining infrastructure usually involves a large investment, requires significant resources and typically takes time to implement. Multiple complex dependencies require careful planning when changes are introduced in order to minimise disruption. With the reliance Monash has on its IT infrastructure, it is important to maintain, refresh and expand the infrastructure to ensure it continues to support the university’s goals. Infrastructure planning needs to be carefully designed and executed so as to retain and improve as appropriate the following attributes security – to ensure data and services are not compromised scalability – to allow for growth and expansion resilience – to ensure services can tolerate a degree of failure recoverability – to ensure services are made available as soon as possible after failure accessibility – to ensure effective use of services by those authorised to use them manageability – to ensure services can be managed cost effectively fitness for purpose – to ensure value by providing effective services for the minimum overall cost

(not over or under engineered) standards compliance – to ensure services can be accessed in a well understood manner and

inter-operate with other services. Because of the long lead times for acquiring and commissioning ICT infrastructure, this planning needs to be done in a long-term context. A key requirement is to anticipate the demands that new business applications will make on infrastructure. This requires: a close engagement with the business so as to be aware of possible new developments an awareness of technology developments in the infrastructure space that might be appropriate

for deployment at Monash an ability to blend requirements and opportunities in a way that matches the university’s resource

constraints and planning/funding cycles.

22

Strategic Initiative: Data Centres

The reliability of the data centre environment and infrastructure is central to providing continuous IT services to the Monash Community. The data centre environmental services and facilities are increasingly becoming unreliable and detrimental to the equipment, and in dire need of refurbishment or replacement. The current ITS Data Centre located in Building 28 is estimated to be approximately 30 years old. An external audit by Norman, Disney, Young Consulting Engineers recommended ITS commence planning a new Data Centre due to the ageing environment. Our second site at Mantrack is of a similar age and state.

As IT technology has evolved from large monolithic computers to today’s densely populated blade servers, data centre technology has adapted to the suit the different power and air conditioning requirements. The proposed data centres would be designed to international standards which cater for these extra demands and maximize data centre availability.

Monash University has always had a strategy of spreading services across two geographically separated data centres for business continuity purposes. There is now an opportunity to combine this with sharing resources with other universities or research institutes. As both the existing facilities are in need of replacement, the strategy is to either: Build two new data centres of 500m2 each - $18.4M Build one new data centre or 500m2 and refurbish the existing Building 28 facility - $13.3M Build one large data centre of 1000m2 and share facilities with another University - $14.8M Refurbish an existing building to build one large data centre of 1000m2 and share facilities with

another University - $10M.

Benefits To decrease the risk of physical

infrastructure failures preventing the ITS Division from supplying the IT services that Monash depends upon in order to achieve its strategic goals.

Proposed leadership Executive Director, ITS Divisional Director, Facilities and Services Director Infrastructure Services, ITS Manager Production Facilities, ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources Until an option is decided it is difficult to put estimated funding. The figures below should be used as a guide only: 2006: Plan and design phase $2M 2007: Commence first data centre $7.2M –

$12M The timing and costing of the second data centre depends on which option is selected: Refurbish B28 $4.1M in 2008 & 2009 Build $9.2M possibly running in to 2009

and 2010.

Status to date (June 2006) ITS requirements document complete Melbourne Uni collaboration feasibility

complete Agreement from VCG to proceed with

shared second data centre Project team formed with Facilities and

Services.

23

Strategic Initiative: Cabled Data Network

Monash University has a large and complex network consisting of more than 1,350 network devices servicing 20,000+ network data points in 150 buildings on 20 sites. The University relies heavily on this network infrastructure for the delivery of academic and administrative services. The University’s enterprise network consists of a scalable, secure, resilient high bandwidth Ethernet core backbone and resilient Ethernet connectivity at very high speeds (gigabits per second). This will achieve high availability network services for our end-users, by progressively eliminating single points of failure. In turn this supports our Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity and 24x7 service delivery objectives. The network includes enhanced security performance to conform with Monash policy. Quality of Service (QoS) support is being implemented to prioritise traffic for delay-sensitive applications such as video and Voice Over IP (VoIP). The strategy for network enhancement supports e-research initiatives with enabling technology for the development of computational storage, and collaboration grids and advanced communication services. The strategy will involve progressively moving to inter-campus and Internet gigabit network capacity links replacing microwave with glass optical fibre technologies as part of the rollout of the Victorian Education and Research Network (VERN). This will enable for the first time the provision of an equal service to all Australian campuses. The VERN fibre network will provide high speed and flexible infrastructure to support advanced education and research services.

Benefits Mobility – Increase demand for a variety of

technologies that aid mobility on-campus, inter-campus, inter-University, Australia-wide and worldwide

Multimedia – Increase opportunities for video, audio, voice and related rich media / mixed media content across the full spectrum of applications, from courseware through to research and administrative functions of the University

Collaboration – Increase use of networked applications to aid collaboration at a distance for education, research and administration

Availability – Reliable service delivery orientation to allow Business Continuity 24x7 with planned resilience and Disaster Recovery support. Network capacity planning ensures risk minimisation to services reliant on the network

Cost effectiveness – By managing complexity and standards compliance.

Accountability – Emphasis on user authentication, usage monitoring, charging, KPIs and management reporting systems

Application aware Networking – Traffic management with prioritised control for an ever expanding diversity of central and end-user applications

Traffic Management – Provide Quality of Service to end-users, dependant on the application and need by prioritisation

Security–Ingress Control – Protect the network from misbehaving applications through the implementation and maintenance of NACP (network access control policy).

Proposed leadership Director Infrastructure Services, ITS Manager Network Infrastructure Services,

ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2006: Next Generation Network

consolidation project totalling $1.1M from IT Capital Development budget

2007: Secure Network Access Control project $144K from Major Capital Works budget; $1.1M on VERN

2007 - 2011: VoIP infrastructure rollout $9M from Major Capital Works budget

2008: $600-700K on VERN from Major Capital Works budget

2009 - 2010: Ongoing operations expenditure self funded from ITS Operational budget; $600-700K on VERN.

Status to date (June 2006) Completely replaced existing edge network

electronics) throughout all campuses to provide a baseline of high capacity standard network equipment

Established network monitoring and management for fault avoidance and capacity planning

Provision of capability for duplicated end user services

Implementation of QoS (Quality of Service) to prioritise network traffic for end-users depending on application and need

Pilot VoIP project to co-exist with existing telephone and data network

Upgraded the capability and capacity of campus and precinct routers to better support access control lists for security management.

24

Strategic Initiative: Wireless Data Network

The Monash University network includes a wireless component in addition to the cabled network described above. This includes over 3,500 wireless clients utilising the Monash Wireless service, as well as over 400 Wireless Access Points implemented across the University sites at faculties, libraries, cafes and meeting areas. The wireless network complements the existing cabled network infrastructure by allowing students and staff to connect from a variety of locations to the Monash network and the Internet, accepting connections from desktops and laptops.

Wireless services are also provided for educational and research conferences and university guests. The mobility of the wireless technology, which is state of the art, is continually being researched and expanded as faculties and departments request for the wireless service. A notable addition here is the planned introduction of the eduroam service (see http://www.eduroam.edu.au/ for more information, including a list of national and international sites). This will allow Monash staff to access wireless networks at other eduroam sites, as well as allowing members of other eduroam institutions to access wireless when they are visiting Monash.

Benefits Accessibility and Mobility – Wireless aids

mobility with base stations located at convenient locations, such as meeting rooms, cafes and notably libraries, thus enabling easier and more productive use of laptops and hand held devices in a open environment

Ease of use – Staff and students can readily register via the wireless website for wireless access and attend wireless workshops for assistance

Coverage and Capacity – Increasing the Wireless access coverage expansion by focused installations coupled with on-demand requests; increased network access capacity in locations such as libraries with both wired and wireless access

Accountability – Emphasis on user authentication, usage monitoring and charging

Authentication – Secure authentication for staff and students accessing the wireless network.

Proposed leadership Senior Management Committee Executive Director, ITS Director Infrastructure Services, ITS Manager Network Infrastructure Services,

ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2006: Wireless (WISE) project totalling

$91K from IT Capital Development budget 2007/2010: Ongoing operations and

enhancements with self funded expenditure from ITS Operational budget.

Status to date (June 2006) Rollout of wireless services (400+ wireless

access points) across all campuses for staff and student mobility

Complete deployment of wireless coverage for all Monash libraries

Conference wireless service – Provided to allow attendees at educational and research conferences held at a Monash University campus, to access the internet during the time they are at the conference

Guest wireless service – Provided to allow wireless access to Monash data network for staff and students ie. visiting academics from other Universities and guests working for Faculties or University divisions

Implemented a wireless management and monitoring system to ensure service availability from the Wireless service

Facilitated with Halls of Residence (Clayton campus) by implementing a secure authentication system for students accessing the wireless network

Planning underway for delivery of eduroam service in 2007.

.

25

Strategic Initiative: Internet Services

All of the locations on the Monash University network interface with the Internet service, connecting the university to the outside world. The Internet service includes provision and management of gateways (proxies, remote access etc), capacity, bandwidth, border and router management. The University’s network speed on-campus, inter-campus and to the internet is gigabit per second. This provides the potential for very high speed access to other Universities and the Internet. However, while all the core network electronics support gigabit Ethernet and high traffic rates in the network hardware, most inbound Internet traffic flows through the various proxy servers. The proxy servers process traffic in software to regulate authentication, access control and billing. The strategy in this area is to move the processing to the network border hardware. This will enhance the performance of the proxy service functions and allow faster access. Depending on the solution adopted, it will also bring potential improvements (network performance and login authentication) and flow-on consequences (changes to our ability to do fine-grained security and billing) in other project and system areas.

Benefits Performance – High speed and high

availability access to the Internet via Aarnet

Mobility – Utilising the internet to access the Monash network from all Monash sites via wired access and also via wireless access and dial-in access using Virtual Private Network (VPN) facilities

Security – Internal/external secure access to resources for research, education and administrative functions of the University for staff and students. It also includes authentication and access-control for devices connected to the edge of the network

Collaboration – Increase use of networked applications to aid collaboration at a distance over all facets of the University’s operations – education, research and administration

Border management and control – To protect the network from misbehaving external applications

Resilience – All modules of the Internet service, including high-bandwidth feeds and border routing have redundant capability enabling a high availability service to be provided for research, education and administrative functions of the University for staff and students

Accountability – An emphasis on user authentication, usage monitoring, charging, KPIs and management reporting systems.

Proposed leadership Executive Director, ITS Director Infrastructure Services, ITS Manager Network Infrastructure Services,

ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2006: AARNet bill recovery system

implemented 2008: Border Authenticating Internet

Gateway project totalling $426K from Major Capital Works budget

2007 – 2010: Ongoing operations expenditure self funded from ITS Operational budget and Monash Internet Billing System.

Status to date (June 2006) Rationalised functions to the network edge

to eliminate central bottlenecks, gateways and complexity

Restructured network addressing for more security and reliability access to the Internet

Improved Internet access bandwidth and resilience

Implementation of a secure billing and reporting system - Monash Internet Billing (MIB)

Increased support for research and educational internet applications, thus providing more fully featured software to enable connection to the Internet with more responsive management and security.

.

26

Strategic Initiative: Telephone Services

Monash University has a large and complex telephone environment. ITS supports all aspects of voice services within buildings and between campuses including overseas. Responsibility includes the University's telephone services, the multi-campus PABX, mobile services, voicemail, voice processing systems and the telephone billing systems for the University. The PABXs at the heart of the telephone network at Monash are in excess of twenty years old and becoming increasingly unreliable. New components have not been available for several years with the vendor relying on refurbished parts. The vendor has now indicated that support will be withdrawn at the end of 2008. A project to replace the PABXs over a four year period with VoIP technologies has been recommended to the University. The VoIP technologies will facilitate the introduction of new integrated collaboration applications supporting research, teaching and administration. It will also be possible to progressively provide staff with state of the art voice and video solutions. The long-term objective is to incorporate VoIP technology and position the University to take advantage of the convergence of voice, video and data. These new converged services have the potential to act as enablers, attractors and productivity enhancers. This is a strategic opportunity to redefine the way the University conducts person-to-person communications. Implementing this converged communications environment will provide innovative solutions to act as an attractor of staff, students and researchers towards choosing Monash as their institute of choice.

Benefits Mobility – Increase demand for a variety of

voice technologies that aid mobility on-campus, inter-campus, inter-University, Australia-wide and worldwide

Collaboration – Increase use of voice technology to aid collaboration over all facets of the University’s operations – education, research and administration

Presence – Improvements in success of reaching the desired person through functionality that supports presence awareness

Targeted communications – Ability of the receiver to control how and when to receive communications

Work-flow – Improvements through the integration of voice and video capabilities to enterprise applications

Cost effectiveness – Containment of costs by moving to one technology network platform that converges voice and data infrastructure into a single unified service. This has operational cost savings and simplified operations in maintaining a single infrastructure

Replacement/Voice and Video Processing Services – call centre solutions, voice mail services, video conferencing and related computer telephony integration applications become more available

Improve integration of various computer telephony integration systems such as voicemail and contact centres with an associated reduction in operational costs.

Proposed leadership Executive Director, ITS Director Infrastructure Services, ITS Manager Network Infrastructure Services,

ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2006: Initial VoIP investment and Next

Generation Network project totalling $160K from IT Capital Development budget

2007: VoIP infrastructure project from Major Capital Works budget – $1.75M

2008: VoIP infrastructure project – $2.04M 2009: VoIP infrastructure project – $1.1M 2010: VoIP infrastructure project – $553K Ongoing operations expenditure for all

years self funded from ITS Operational budget.

Status to date (June 2006) Provision of call centre services Piloting the VoIP Project Developed and implemented a Disaster

Recovery process for Voicemail Planing for convergence Upgrade of majority of University cabling to

latest standards Migration of intercampus voice traffic to

use internet protocols Upgrade of hardware racks including

temperature monitoring and resilience.

27

Strategic Initiative: Host Server Platforms

The host server platforms provide the underpinning infrastructure for all University applications and services. Traditional infrastructure techniques result in a high number of servers, low utilisation per server, higher support costs and large quantity of data-centre space. There are now in excess of 450 physical servers on the floor in the data centres with the number steadily increasing. This increase has resulted in significant staff costs to manage the servers, data centre costs to house them and vendor maintenance costs to support them. The opportunity exists now to use new infrastructure technologies to provision server capacity in a flexible, on demand manner, allowing capacity to be used efficiently by increasing or decreasing capacity as needed by the application, in a cost effective way. With the emergence of stable server virtualization technology, it is now possible to significantly reduce the number of physical servers and provision server capacity quickly and efficiently and thus reduce operational costs. ITS is therefore undertaking a concerted effort to consolidate and standardise the infrastructure environment built upon Open Standards to provide a secure, uniform platform that simplifies configuration, deployment, and management of our server resources and reduces the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The ability to provide this environment will be greatly improved through the use of server consolidation and virtualisation by the use of server blade technology, high density multiprocessor clusters and virtualisation software. During 2006 the migration of services from the existing hardware platforms to this virtualised space began. Further migrations will occur as hardware currently in use comes to end of life over 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Benefits Overall decrease of required data centre

space through reduction in physical hardware size

Lower power and environmental resource usage through fewer physical servers

Lower TCO per server as utilisation of hardware is typically increased from below 20% to above 80% therefore requiring less physical devices to deliver the same performance

Improvement in scalability and enhanced ability to deploy new services efficiently and in the shortest possible timeframe

Improved business continuity through hardware sharing and the ability to relocate virtual servers to other sites in real time, minimising outages

Simplified Disaster Recovery by using common hardware across ICT services

Improve efficiencies with staff skill sets being focused on a smaller number of variations in hardware and software to support.

Proposed leadership Executive Director, ITS Director Infrastructure Services, ITS Director Corporate Services ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2006: replacement of end of life hardware

for student environment and staff environment from ITS Operational budget $100K

2007: Targeted funds to support additional service migration to an enhanced Virtualisation Centre. Using VMWare deployed on AMD multi-way platforms $100K

2007: Exploration of the use of system monitoring tools (including Open Source) to further enhance and develop the Virtual environments $100K

2007: replacement of end of life hardware for staff and student environment from ITS Operational budget $100K

2008 – 2009: Enterprise wide consolidation and virtualisation of hosts within Shared Systems $2M

2008 – 2010: 1st phase of refreshment of blade environment (amount to be determined).

Status to date (June 2006) Successful virtualisation pilot using

VMWare using 4 way AMD servers Initial deployment of container technology

in Solaris V10 underway Base blade infrastructure purchased Blade implementation project team

assembled from relevant IS sections.

28

Strategic Initiative: Data Storage Management

The demand for data storage at Monash is being driven at an exponential rate. Researchers are leading this trend, encouraged by the adoption of leading-edge electronic research instruments such as the synchrotron and scanning electron microscopes. In the area of corporate data requirements, the storage area network (SAN) has grown from 8 terabytes in 2004 to 65 terabytes today. Some of this was latent demand but much is the growth in the amount of data collected and stored in digital format today. Storing and managing such large amounts of data is not a trivial problem from either a cost or a staffing perspective. ITS must look for more cost effective and innovative ways for managing such large volumes of data. The technologies used must also be highly reliable, as the data must be available for users, secure, and easily managed to minimise staff costs. The challenge is to provision storage capacity on an as required basis, at the lowest cost possible, and in as efficient a manner as possible, while still meeting the resilience, performance and recovery needs of the application. A Storage Area Network was installed in 2004 in order to better manage university data, to increase storage efficiency, to improve resilience and reduce costs. By eliminating the need to connect servers to specific storage devices through the use of virtualisation technology, storage efficiency will be increased and the management effort required to provision storage reduced, both of which will drive down the ongoing cost of storage. Activities anticipated within the 2006 – 2010 timeframe include: introduce a third (lower cost) storage tier to cater to different application storage needs. Low-end

Fibre Channel, SCSI or ATA-based disk arrays will be introduced for data archival systems as secondary near-line storage

introduce new higher capacity tape and disk technologies investigate more cost effective SAN technologies use of IP-based iSCSI to lower costs use of an ‘Edge SAN’ consisting of lower cost components storage resource management reporting to identify inefficiencies storage virtualisation for dynamical allocation and increased utilisation hierarchical storage management (near line storage on tape).

Benefits Reliable data protection via enterprise

class backup and restore facilities Tiered data storage solutions to meet the

differing university demands Reduced administration cost per Gigabyte Reduce Total Cost of Ownership per

Gigabyte Improved business continuity Improved efficiency for disk storage

utilization Supported environment Remove vendor lock in, to create greater

competition for future purchases.

Proposed leadership Executive Director, ITS Director Infrastructure Services, ITS Manager Production Facilities, ITS Manager Shared Systems, ITS Manager Network Infrastructure Services,

ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources New initiatives; 2006: Increase capacity, pilot iSCSI and

create disaster recovery setups $650K 2007: Increase capacity, software licenses

$633K implement storage virtualisation $300K

2008: Increase capacity, software licenses $181K Further rollout of storage virtualisation $150K

2009: Increase capacity, software licenses, start technology refresh $680K, storage virtualisation SW software license $75K

2010: Increase capacity, software licenses, start technology refresh $680K.

Status to date (June 2006) Corporate SAN is completed Business continuity improvements via

cross site replication Backup facility is completed iSCSI pilot is commencing Large Research Data Sets (LaRDS)

project identifying needs of e-researchers and providing interim capacity.

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Strategic Initiative: Workstation Infrastructure

All services and applications provided to the user by ICT systems depend upon the desktop environment to provide the initial access. This places considerable reliance on providing a reliable and consistent workstation infrastructure to facilitate this service. During 2005 – 2006 a large amount of work has been undertaken to enhance the infrastructure supporting workstations with several major system upgrades occurring. The university now has an enhanced deployment and management mechanism, including workstation inventory, remote access services and workstation data backup, that will reduce the support costs associated with this type of infrastructure. Workstation services (file, print, authentication, mobility, application distribution) are currently provided by Novell software running on its proprietary Netware operating system. Novell’s preferred deployment environment has moved from Netware to the Linux operating system. As a result, ITS plans to progressively replace Netware with Linux in order to reduce the number of operating systems it supports. Over the next two years, ITS will also conduct a review to ascertain if the services provided by the Novell environment running on Linux will continue to be appropriate in the coming years, particularly in light of new overlapping services becoming available through the Workgroup Collaboration project. A mature process for the definition and development of a Standard Operating Environment (SOE) for hardware and software has been in place for a number of years. This will continue to be undertaken as a collaborative process with representatives from around the University. The growth in the use of thin client technology will continue as part of the SOE environment. This can provide a secure and flexible way to deliver application and system access to Victorian based locations, as well as providing services to Monash locations outside of Australia.

Benefits Lower costs associated with desktop

support through the use of a Standard Operating Environment allowing quicker support through telephone, remote or onsite access

Ability to deploy University services and applications in a consistent and timely fashion

Increased staff productivity due to availability of consistent and reliable systems resulting in less “downtime” of desktops

Better management of data, software and hardware assets at the desktop through the adoption of tools such as workstation software image deployment, hardware inventory and workstation backup utilities

All staff have the ability to access applications and data through a number of mechanisms from different locations around the University

All students obtain high quality, consistent services regardless of campus or location.

Proposed leadership Executive Director, ITS Director Infrastructure Services, ITS.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2005-2006: initial update of server

infrastructure $32K 2006: implementation of remote access

services $150K 2007: review and renew of thin client

usage and technologies $45K 2007-2008: rollout of Standard Operating

Environment university-wide $1M 2008: ongoing operational support.

Status to date (June 2006) Update of server infrastructure Updated staff and student SOEs Implementation of remote access services

via NetStorage and Workstation Backup system.

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Strategic Initiative: Security

Maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the University’s teaching, research and administration information is extremely important to Monash’s survival. As a large proportion of Monash’s IT fleet is directly connected to the Internet, the University is potentially susceptible to threats that can directly impact the security of its information. These threats are constantly changing. Monash needs to be continually vigilant in defending itself against these security issues so as to protect its reputation and its intellectual property. A combination of people, processes, and technology is needed to protect against IT security risks. People (staff, students, and IT staff) must be adequately educated to ensure they understand how they can help protect the University from attack. Our IT security policy and processes are based on best practice ISO 17799. From the technology perspective, key IT security components are integrating together to provide a platform where users can do what they require, but do so securely. This is especially important when looked at from a University perspective. This strategy encompasses the following components: Education – maintain an active education programme with all users of IT at the University. Processes – ensure that Monash’s security policy and procedures meet best practice. Technology – Review the University’s security architecture in terms of:

o Firewalls, which allow appropriate traffic and block inappropriate traffic o Intrusion Prevention systems, which detect attacks and stop them in real time o Network Admission Control, which ensures networked devices are ‘safe’ before they are

allowed access to the University’s network resources. The University’s anti-virus product is also due for renewal. A review of the current product was recently undertaken. The outcome from that review was that Monash should issue an RFP to evaluate the costs and benefits of currently available anti-virus offerings.

Benefits Protects the University against user

initiated security problems through an effective user education programme

Enhances the Network Access Control Policy, provides support for more protocols, e.g. H.323 which will support collaboration via voice/video conferencing

Allows finer grain access control and configuration to services, reducing the risk of compromise

Stops attacks in real time, lowering required staff effort. Will also stop undesirable protocols in real time, e.g. Kazaa, BitTorrent

Protects PCs by ensuring they have the latest patches and up to date anti-virus installed on them – this is especially important with portable computers that may plug into different networks.

Proposed leadership IT Security Steering Committee. ITS Directorate Designated University IT Security Officers Anti-Virus Review Committee.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2006: Anti-Virus Request For Proposal

$250K from ITS Operational Budget, Education programme – researchers and students $25K from ITS Operational budget

2007: Firewalls $300K Major Capital Works budget, Education programme – staff $10K from ITS operational budget

2008: Firewalls $750K Major Capital Works budget, Intrusion Prevention System $1M Major Capital Works budget – IT staff $10K From ITS Operational budget

2009: Network Admission Control $700K Major Capital Works budget.

Status to date (June 2006) IT Security for Researchers education

campaign about to be launched Firewall project concept submitted for

2007/2008 capital funding Anti-Virus review completed, draft RFP

written.

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Strategic Initiative: Application Integration

Monash University has a large and diverse collection of information systems. In order to support the business processes of the university and also provide a range of reports it is necessary to connect these information systems together and exchange data. The existing point to point interface design was at the time best practice for a small number of systems. As the number of systems and data exchanges has grown, the point to point approach has become progressively less appropriate. In its current form it is inflexible, time-consuming when tracking problems, and more prone to exchanging obsolete or duplicate data. Each time a new interface is added the problems are exacerbated, because the point to point approach requires the new interface to connect to most of the existing systems. ITS is running out of time slots each night to perform batch exports/imports and there is no overall co-ordination of the exercise. At the same time, business units are facing increasing pressure to provide meaningful ‘services’ to their clients. In opposition to this is the fact that the existing application-to-application interfaces are based on the data requirements of the systems – not the business processes that support the provisioning of services to clients. This mismatch of focus cannot be addressed by our current toolsets or methodologies. The most appropriate solution is a set of tools based on the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). BPEL can access and make available web services within non-web based applications, provide direct database links between applications and provide workflowed interaction between multiple applications. This has the potential to provide an environment that can orchestrate systems talking to each other in line with the various business units’ business processes.

Benefits The ability to plan for and implement world

class business practices Easier facilitation of enterprise wide

reporting models Ability to link local administrative systems

to corporate applications Better, timelier access to information with

real-time integration of events providing improved support for business needs

Reduction in inquiries and complaints from students and staff arising from delays in triggered events

Ability to convert manual workflows into web based applications that cross application boundaries

Development of a systematic and flexible approach to application integration

Only data changes (or delta) are communicated, thereby eliminating costly overheads of deleting/replacing entire data sets in the target application

Reduction in costs of interface development, maintenance and operations

Reduction in risk of errors caused by relying on unauthorised sources of data

Reduction in risk caused by staff not acting on data related prompts.

Proposed Leadership Integration Competency Centre (combining

business units that own or use data from corporate administration systems)

Executive Director, ITS Director Application Services, ITS.

Estimated Investments/Funding Sources 2006: Pilot project funded by ITS Capital

Development Fund – software and hardware for development environment and trial development of 3 different key interface types

2007: $501K Major Capital Works budget, $100K new ITS operational budget, $20K existing ITS operational budget

2008: Stage 2 rollout from Major Capital Works budget $200K and ITS operating budget $130K

2009-2010 and ongoing: Absorbed into the ITS operational budget.

Status to Date (June 2006) Pilot project commenced with work nearly

complete on the development of 2 of the 3 interface types. The first interface type has proven the concept of taking a real time update in Callista of a student encumbrance, and sending that update to Crux real-time via a web service to immediately encumber or delete an encumbrance from a student

Work has commenced on defining a comprehensive framework for the project encompassing architecture, Disaster Recovery Planning, governance structure, programming standards, documentation standards and the services and support infrastructure required to make this project a success.

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Strategic Initiative: Identity Management and Authentication Systems

Identity Management describes the processes and systems that are required in order to control who has access to ICT services and systems. This includes services such as computer account and password management, centralised directory services, account profiles, access rights, and the systems and processes that are required to manage this. This is especially important to ensure that services are only available to authorised users. This strategic initiative aims to provide complete management of all authentication and identification requirements on behalf of all of the other ICT services and systems at Monash. Monash has a number of systems in place including the central account management system (CRUX) and a centralised directory service (Monash Directory Service). These systems provide basic username and password services, as well as user profile information, and are used as a foundation for many other ICT applications and services. These systems will need to be revised to meet the requirements of the proposed new workgroup and collaboration services. As well as basic username and password authentication, a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) service is also provided to allow a higher level of authentication and identification for systems that require a higher level of security. The current PKI service software is no longer supported by the vendor. It will need to be replaced. CAUDIT also has an initiative to provide a national PKI service for the Australian higher education sector. The replacement PKI will be reconfigured to link in with the CAUDIT PKI initiative. Monash’s research staff are increasingly working collaboratively with staff at other universities and with industry partners. A small number of large scientific instruments, high performance computational resources and data storage resources need to be accessed remotely by staff at institutions working collaboratively all over the world. The Federal government has also set up a series of initiatives relating to e-Research. Federated Identity Management is a key enabling technology to authenticate and authorize access to these resources, which may reside at participating institutions and organizations anywhere in the world. Monash has been a leader in establishing Directory Services and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) in Australia, both key components of Federated Identity Management. ITS is working with other Australian institutions in establishing a Shibboleth service, the Federated Identity Management system selected by many universities and research organizations around the world. This will allow greater collaboration between Monash researchers and researchers at other institutions. It also has the potential to provide Single Sign-on (SSO) web services within the university.

Benefits Reduced cost through centralised

management of user computer accounts and identity

Increased security through centralised management and consistent application of registration/deregistration procedures

Ability to collaborate easily with external parties.

Proposed leadership Executive Director, ITS Director, e-Research Centre.

Estimated investments/funding sources 2006: Create Shibboleth service $50K

from e-Research budget 2007: Add support for new workgroup

collaboration services to central directory service. Costed as part of workgroup collaboration strategic initiative

2008: Replace Public Key Infrastructure $250K from Major Capital Works budget budget.

Status to date (June 2006) Existing centralised directory and identity

management services have been in place since late 1990’s

2005: Participated in CAUDIT PKI project to help establish a sector wide PKI Service

2006: Obtained grant towards implementation of Shibboleth service (as part of the DEST funded MAMS project)

2006: Developing production service to support Shibboleth-based cross-university authentication.