Projects & Initiatives
Highlights of Major ISC Projects & Initiatives for 2008

Learn how ISC works and partners with others at Penn to make the institution work more efficiently and effectively. Listed below are descriptions of and links to some of the projects and initiatives underway at ISC. To read about a project, select a topic to the right or scroll through the page:

Admissions
Undergraduate: Information Systems & Computing and the Undergraduate Admissions Office are collaborating to provide powerful new technologies and new procedures to raise Penn’s highly successful admissions process to the next level. The new Undergraduate Admissions Project will provide superior customer service through personalized outreach and real-time information. New tools allow Admissions staff to perform their jobs more easily by managing information about prospective students, such as standardized test scores and secondary school profile data, 24-hours a day from anywhere in the world and allow volunteer alumni interviewers to manage applicant interview information more efficiently. Future tools will include document management, specifically a repository for all information whether electronic or paper, and applicant tracking, cycle monitoring, and selection functionality to support the applicant evaluation and decision process. Scheduled for implementation during Fall 2008: application intake and imaging, applicant portal, and transcript entry. The new Undergraduate Admissions Project will position Penn for the future. Learn more by visiting http://www.upenn.edu/computing/isc/apps/adm/test/.

Central Authentication
Protecting the privacy of Penn constituents and reducing compliance and reputational risk to Penn have long been critical goals for Information Systems & Computing. These concerns have intensified in the face of growing internet fraud and identity theft. Information Systems & Computing is working to improve and strengthen Penn's web authentication to further protect University assets and individual data by introducing the most robust authentication strategies available today. Initiatives include updating Penn's web authentication infrastructure to better defend against modern identity theft attacks while retaining interoperability with Penn's existing infrastructure, enabling a multi-level framework of assurance to define the sensitivity of a given system and the confidence level required for access, strengthening passwords to increase their resistance to brute force cracking, and establishing a central authentication log to identify and remediate damage in the event of a compromise. For more information, please contact Jim Choate at choate@isc.upenn.edu.

Exchange
Information Systems & Computing has launched a multi-year project to convert Penn to Exchange, the messaging platform that provides email and scheduling functionality and the tools for custom collaboration and messaging-service applications. These are important tools for a University that values cross-discipline teaching and cross-campus collaboration, and that has many employees who work both from the office and from the road. The conversion from MeetingMaker is being accomplished through Sumatra technology. The initial goal is to steadily increase Penn's Exchange customer base to position the University's messaging and calendaring to meet the needs of a 21st century campus. For more information, please contact Deke Kassabian at deke@isc.upenn.edu.

Faculty Information System
The most challenging questions and problems of our time cannot be addressed by one discipline. A primary focus of the Provost's Office is to recruit and retain outstanding faculty to work across disciplines. One strategy is to recruit eminent scholars to hold joint appointments in two schools or departments to help Penn achieve truly successful partnerships among the arts and sciences and the professional schools to benefit students, society, and the global community. A second strategy is to have the analytical information that supports cross-discipline cooperation. The Faculty Information System, a joint project of the Office of the Provost, Institutional Research, the 12 Schools, and Information Systems & Computing, will play an important role in meeting this goal by joining data from other systems to provide a complete and central record of faculty history. FIS is comprised of four systems – Faculty Recruitment, Faculty Compensation Collection, Faculty Appointment, and Analytical Reporting – and client requests continue for additional component development and implementation. By automating these processes, the new Faculty Information System will provide improved data quality and consistency, university-wide historical data analysis, and increased productivity. For more information, please contact Jim Cunningham at jcunnin@isc.upenn.edu.

UPenn Alert System
College years are among the most important, most challenging, and most enjoyable years of life. Penn is expanding and refocusing its emergency communications strategies to ensure these years are also among the safest years of life. In a joint initiative with Public Safety, Information Systems & Computing launched a new emergency notification broadcast system that delivers time-sensitive emergency notifications to Penn’s entire 50,000+ students, faculty, and staff in the unlikely event of an emergency affecting the Penn and University City communities. The powerful new campus-wide UPenn Alert System sends notifications within minutes via voicemail, text-messaging, and e-mail to mobile and stationary devices. For more information, please contact Dan Shapiro at shapiro@isc.upenn.edu.

PennERA
PennERA is the University's Electronic Research Administration project, a multiyear initiative to develop streamlined processes and more efficient tools for handling pre- and post-award administrative tasks related to the sponsored projects of Penn's academic research community. A joint project of the Office of Research Services, the Office of Regulatory Affairs, and Information Systems & Computing, the project will implement a cradle-to-grave web-based system for research project development, support, and management. Key components include Proposal Development, used for NIH electronic submissions; Profiler, used for safety and compliance training needs identification; Conflict of Interest, used to centrally store disclosure information; Center for Technology Transfer, used to manage patents, copyrights, and trademarks; and Electronic Human Subject Protocol Submission, used to streamline protocol reporting efforts. Penn currently ranks as one of the premier research universities in the nation with a broad-based multidisciplinary approach that encourages collaborations between faculty and students from across Penn's 12 schools. For more information about PennERA, please go to the https://www.pennera.upenn.edu/.

Penn InTouch Refresh
Penn attracts some of the best and brightest students from around the world. They arrive on campus with high expectations about every aspect of their college experience from dorm life to the technology they use. The redesign of Penn In Touch will create a more integrated seamless experience as students use this portal to access a myriad of enrollment and financial information anywhere/anytime. For more information, please contact Dan Shapiro at shapiro@isc.upenn.edu.

Unified Communication
Information Systems & Computing is converting Penn's legacy telecommunications systems to IP-based platforms enabling redundancy and lower operating costs. ISC currently has some 1,500 PennNet Voice over IP phones in service and plans to deploy 1,500 additional phones during the next fiscal year. It anticipates finishing the conversion to all VoIP by FY12. ISC also is developing a strategy for migration from the legacy voicemail platform to the next generation platform. Penn’s piloted IM service has proven to be low cost to operate and highly reliable. ISC provides this service, which facilitates collaboration among co-workers both on-site and off-site, for free to its more than 16,000 VoIP and email clients. The Unified Communication initiative supports the campus-wide goal of creating incremental resources through effective, collaborative, and innovative approaches. For more information, please contact Deke Kassabian at deke@isc.upenn.edu.

Wireless
As part of Penn's commitment to enhance the quality of experiences for all those who interact in the Penn community, Information Systems & Computing has embarked on a multi-year initiative to move Penn from 65% wireless to 100% wireless. ISC will consolidate Penn's four separate campus wireless networks into a single network using 802.1X, the most reliable authentication technology available, to meet the mobility expectations of an ever increasingly tech savvy campus community and provide a seamless user experience. This will eliminate a costly and redundant Wireless PennNet service and Bluesocket legacy wireless authentication infrastructure. It will also allow ISC to introduce a new service that will provide guest wireless access. To see campus wireless availability, please go to wireless map at http://www.upenn.edu/computing/wireless/map.html.

PennConnect DVD
The award-winning PennConnect DVD makes it easy for students, faculty, and staff to install and configure Penn's supported networking and anti-virus software. The DVD significantly reduces support costs by providing users with current software that has been licensed and customized for use at Penn. ISC works closely with vendors and with IT staff on campus to ensure the DVD supports the full range of systems on campus. To pick up a copy of the DVD or to learn more, see the PennConnect web page at http://www.upenn.edu/computing/pennconnect/.

IT Orientation
Penn's goal is to recruit, retain, develop, and manage a highly talented and diverse workforce. It is committed to creating cross-functional learning and professional development and training opportunities and it is committed to developing employee capabilities to perform work effectively and in compliance with good practices, appropriate policies, and regulatory requirements. One of Information Systems & Computing's primary missions within Penn's distributed computing model is to provide services for Penn’s IT community. Two to three times a year, ISC offers general orientation sessions open to all IT employees at the University. The orientation program ensures new IT employees have a basic understanding of computing at Penn and know where to turn for help. The sessions cover ISC-provided core IT services, such as networking and technology support services, as well as important policies, Penn's decision-making process, and information on groups employees can join to network with other IT professionals. Monthly follow-up sessions cover a range of topics of interest. To reserve your seat for any of the IT Orientation sessions, please use the registration form located at: http://www.tts.isc.upenn.edu/oncampus.asp.

Penn Community/PennCard
Information Systems & Computing is committed to meeting the needs of Penn's highly diverse community comprised of faculty, researchers, students, alumni, staff, and other friends and patrons from all four corners of the globe. ISC and Business Services are collaborating to improve PennCard, the University's identification card that is also used for many services, from building access to PennCash purchases. The new PennCard application, scheduled for December 2008 implementation, will better accommodate Penn community members with multiple affiliations to the University, facilitate the inclusion of alumni within the PennCard system, and improve the process of bringing new staff on-board. For more information, please contact Tess Bocage at bocage@isc.upenn.edu.

PennERA