May 2023 Agenda

Meeting Date: May 3, 2023

Time: 9:30 am - 11:00 am

Location: Teams

Remote Attendance: Alex Basse, Craig Woolley, Tommy Smith, Peter Trentacoste, Stephen Beck, Andy Maverick, Sandi Gillilan, Kappie Mumphrey, Rudy Hirschheim, Chad Brackin, Julie Perkins, Mo Carney, Jacqueline Bach, Matthew LaBorde

Presenters: Robin Ethridge, Ryan Landry, Katie Bouey, Sumit Jain 

Others: Stephen Heyward, Jason Normand, Parampreet Singh, David Alexander, Rick Simmons

Absent: Elahe Russell, Melanie Thornton, Bret Collier 

 

Opening 

1. Administrative Announcements    

2. Executive ITGC Updates [Craig Woolley] 
 

Action 

3. Approval of the Minutes from the Meeting held on April 5, 2023 

4. Discussion and Vote on IT Security Policies 
Resolution: IT Governance Council acknowledges the need to establish new policies for IT and Information Security to ensure that requirements of PM-36 and security best practices are codified in LSUAM University policies. Therefore, IT Governance Council approves the draft policies and standards presented to the Council by LSU ITS. The Council shall provide this recommendation to the LSU Office of Academic Affairs for the 14 policies to enter the university's overall review and approval process. 
 

Information/Discussion 

5. Workday Student Project Update [Ryan Landry]   

6. Data Warehouse [Robin Ethridge] 

7. Main Moodle & LSU Online Moodle Consolidation [Kappie Mumphrey]  

8. ITS ITGC Project List/Teams Telephony [Katie Bouey] 
 
 
Wrap-Up 

9. Information sharing/Announcements [All] 

10. Suggested agenda items for future meetings, including ITS topics of interest [All] 

11. Next steps/Follow-up items [Chair] 

 

May 2023 Minutes

1. Administrative Announcements 

Craig Woolley shared that ITS is in the middle of its customer satisfaction survey, and he reminded the Council that feedback is important. 
 

3. Meeting Minutes Approval 

April meeting minutes were approved with no revision. Motion to approve by Tommy Smith; seconded by Alex Basse. 
 

4. Discussion and Vote on IT Security Policies  

Craig announced that the IT security policies were presented to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee as well as to the full Faculty Senate. He shared that the Faculty Senate Executive Committee formed an ad hoc Faculty Senate IT Committee consisting of eight members and chaired by Dr. Singh. He also informed the Council that the Faculty Senate has shared the policies with all faculty they have distribution to. Craig shared various key dates and milestones, with various subcommittees and Academic Affairs providing input throughout the month of May. He stated the goal is to have the Council vote on the policies in early June and sent to the President for signature. Ryan Landry, Academic Affairs, thanked the Council for their efforts on the policy approval process. Dr. Singh, Chair of the ad hoc Faculty Senate IT Committee, thanked the Council for allowing faculty time to provide input on the policies. He stated that the goal of the committee is to meet at least twice a week to review the policies. Sumit Jain, ITS, gave a brief summary of changes to the policies, including the removal of the annual requirement for security awareness training for employees and the expansion of the IT100 process to include trial and evaluation software for 30 days. He added that a significant change was made to the Acceptable Use Policy to address how network acceptable use would be applied to research and academia. 
 

5. Workday Student Project Update 

Ryan Landry gave an update on the Workday Student Project with respect to Change Management. He shared that the Organizational Change Management (OCM) is underpinned by the three areas of Organizational Readiness, Communications, and Training. He added that a fulltime OCM Manager will be onboarded as a member of ITS staff to assist with observing and logging change impacts in the organizational readiness component. Ryan shared how changes would be tracked. He also shared the project timeline across the different institutions, with Cohort 1 comprised of the Baton Rouge and Eunice campuses, and Cohort 2 comprised of the Alexandria and Shreveport campuses. Ryan also shared the communications plan, the various Workday audiences that would receive messages, and the communication channels and tools that would be used. He also shared the types of training that would be made available to various groups. There was a brief discussion on how the non-LSU A&M campuses would fit within the change management process that was developed. There was also a brief discussion concerning when an update would be communicated to the various campuses at large. 
 

6. Data Warehouse 

Robin Ethridge, ITS, gave an update on Data Warehouse. She stated that the goal of the project is to provide a self-service, customer-centric experience that enables access to the right information at the right time for decision making. Robin gave an overview of the Data Warehouse Architecture. She stated that data from operational systems such as Workday and TeamDynamix would be loaded into the data warehouse solution resulting in reporting in tools such as Tableau, Power BI, and SAS. Robin stated that the project team is working on identifying student data from Workday that will need to reside in the data warehouse to capture point in time snapshots for compliance reporting needs after the mainframe and other legacy student systems from each campus are retired. She added that historical data located in those various student systems will be copied into the data warehouse. She added that each LSU institution has been credentialed with their own accounts within the data warehouse solution. Robin shared that they ran into a data compatibility issue with some data populations and are investigating alternative tools to address these data types. She added that the University is searching for a tool that would take advantage of the computing technology available with the data warehouse software to quickly and efficiently transform raw data replicated from source systems to an analytical format that can be easily consumed by end user reporting and visual analytics tools. Robin shared that to address security, users would have to log into the data warehouse with myLSU login credentials and added that access could be controlled by type of data, organizational hierarchy (institution, college, or department), or by jobs or roles.  
 
Robin shared Hawk Eye, a pilot that was put together at the beginning of the project. She shared the pilot objectives, including centralizing the data, utilizing available functionality and experts, and developing LSU resources. She shared that the pilot analyzed legacy application data and visualization requirements, imported raw data using existing tools, transformed that raw data into analytical data using alternative tools, secured that data, and developed reporting dashboards. She shared that the original method to transform data involved pulling the data out and then pushing it back in which is inefficient. She added that the new tools being analyzed are all graphical user interfaces (GUI) and no code/low code, resulting in more efficient and faster development of analytical models. Robin shared the project’s next steps, which include the selection of a modern data ingestion tool and a no-code data transformation tool, as well as the assessing/enabling of cloud storage for data ingestion. There was a brief discussion concerning the timing of the project in relation to the Workday Student Project, which are both happening at the same time. Craig added that the data warehouse software solution is a very cost-effective one, with the other LSU institutions able to join in. There was a brief discussion concerning when the product would be available to end-users, as well as an intake process to look at the data users intend to put in or pull out of the system. Craig stated that there is the need to have conversations concerning data governance. 
 

7. Moodle Consolidation 
Kappie Mumphrey shared that in the summer, the LSU Online and the main LSU instances of Moodle would be combined into a single instance. Any new LSU Online courses for summer will be created and stood up in the main Moodle site. She added that there is a GROK article available with information and that the Faculty Technology Center (FTC) is available to answer questions from faculty. 
 

8. ITS ITGC Project List/Teams Telephony 
Katie Bouey, PMO, gave an update on the Teams Telephony Project. She shared that approximately 54% of the existing phone numbers have been migrated. She also shared that the University will be able to meet or come under the projected cost for the project. Katie shared statistics for the telephony project, including the number of physical phones and headsets purchased to date. She stated that the goal of the project is to have all users migrated by the end of August. 
Katie also gave a brief update on the Identity Access Management (IAM) Project. She stated that the team is wrapping up the requirements gap analysis before reaching out to see which vendor would be the best fit. There was a brief discussion on the timing of the IAM project, which is aligned with the timing of Workday Student. 
 

9. Information Sharing/Announcements 
The Chair announced the next meeting of the Council would take place in early June.