Computing and Information Services

Computing and Information Services (CIS) is the centralized support organization at Brown University for information technology. CIS is responsible for maintaining distributed and centralized computing services on campus, supporting academic and administrative departments in the effective and efficient use of these technologies, and promoting an understanding of evolving technologies. CIS provides a broad range of computing support services based on a diverse set of hardware, including a mainframe, midrange servers and desktop computers, all linked through a campus backbone and departmental networks. CIS is also responsible for the communications infrastructure of the University, providing voice, data and video services.

CIS is housed in several buildings. The computing support and training staff are centrally located in the CIT building, on the corner of Brook and Waterman Streets. Most CIS staff, including the offices of the CIS administration, are located off-campus at 3 Davol Square. [directions]

Departmental Responsibilities and Organization

• Organizational Chart

CIS is ultimately responsible for the information resources environment. This environment consist of the servers, databases, networks, software development and management tools, core services, training, and personnel which comprise the computing infrastructure or foundation for development, operation, and delivery of electronic information services at Brown University.

CIS is comprised of several groups: Academic Technology Services, Personal Technology Services, Administrative Information Services, IT Security, and Network Technology & Services. In recent years these groups have found themselves becoming more dependent on each other in providing services to the Brown community.

Academic Technology Services

Academic Technology Services has responsibility for faculty support in instruction and research. This group is also responsible for the education of the campus in technology services. Staff in this group collaborate with the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning as well as the University Library in providing these services. The groups within this area are: Teaching and Learning Services, Development Group, Multimedia Lab, and Women Writer's Project.

Teaching and Learning Services

Teaching and Learning Services is committed to providing and supporting an academic environment that is enriched by the use of computer technology. Computer technology has the potential to enable and enhance the instructional interactions that occur between all members of the Brown community. There are two divisions of Teaching and Learning Services: Computer Education and the Instructional Technology Group.

Computer Education offers hundreds of classes each year to staff members on productivity and web publishing software. Additionally, Computer Education runs a computer training program for students that provides evening classes on technology they will encounter in both their academic and professional careers.

The Instructional Technology Group supports faculty in their efforts to make use of technology to reach their teaching objectives. The Instructional Technology Group makes available technology tools such as WebCT and the Personal Response System, provides consultation, training, and support to individual faculty, and researches and helps implement new instructional technology solutions.

Scholarly Technology Group

This group supports the development and use of advanced information technology in academic research, teaching, and scholarly communication. It pursues this mission by developing scholarly projects with faculty and other academic departments. Projects come primarily through applications to the Faculty Grants Program, and also more informally through referrals from the Instructional Technology Group and others.

Multimedia Lab (MML)

The MML is Brown University's primary facility for teaching creative computing applications and techniques. There are two MML facilities, one located in the Graduate Center complex, and one in the List Art building.

Women Writer's Project (WWP)

The WWP has pioneered the encoding of a large literary corpus and supports work in text encoding and the use of electronic texts in teaching and scholarship.

Personal Technology Services (PTS)

The primary focus of Personal Technology Services is to provide excellent, customer-focused services to the campus community on personal desktop hardware and applications. There are three units that make up this area: Help Desk, Desktop Support, & Telecommunications.

Help Desk

The Help Desk supports faculty, staff and students by providing technical support and troubleshooting. In addition to assisting customers who visit the office, the Help Desk answers email directed to Help@brown.edu, and calls to 863-HELP. In cases where problems cannot be resolved remotely, the Help Desk offers Service on Site (SOS). Through SOS, students, faculty and staff receive on-site assistance with their computing problems on site, in their departments or student residence halls. Computer Accounts and Passwords handles requests related to computer accounts (access problems, password changes, creation of accounts, unlocking of accounts, termination of accounts, and network id management).

Desktop Support

Desktop Support prepares, maintains and distributes standardized desktop computers and software to departments. This group also prepares and maintains software packages for centralized distribution; provides second and third tier technical support; creates documentation; assists with training; supports departmental computing staff and assists departments in moving to a standardized desktop environment.

Other areas of responsibility include:

• Setting hardware and operating system standards.
• Developing, documenting, and supporting procedures for configuring client computer systems for network connectivity.
• Overseeing the licensing and distribution of software.
• Installing, maintaining, and distributing over 200 Macintosh and Windows applications that can be installed on networked computers or used in the public computing areas.
• Supporting Macintosh and Windows desktop configurations, printers, and projection for over 200 computers in the public computing clusters, training rooms, and classrooms.
• Repairing University owned computing equipment.

Telecommunications

Telecommunications staff provides support, training and services to faculty, staff and students. These services include: local and long distance calling, voice mail boxes and menus, conference calling, cellular phones, pagers, calling cards, moves, adds and changes to University telephone lines, payphones, administrative telephone billing, operator services, inbound toll free numbers.

Administrative Information Services

Administrative Information Services is an organization responsible for the confidentiality, integrity, reliability, and availability of electronic administrative services and information. Administrative Information Services is primarily a service organization that supports and enhances the efforts of the Brown community to utilize this information to promote the business and mission of the University.

Administrative Information Systems works with University customers to plan, acquire, develop, and maintain core business and student support systems. It consults with University clients on the redesign of business processes and the application of technology to facilitate business change and meet business requirements. It works with University departments to enable the exchange of data between outside agencies or department-based systems with core University systems and works to appropriately make available access to University data.

In particular, Administrative Information Services is charged with maintaining operating system software, database design, backup, recoverability, problem resolution, and quality assurance of administrative information systems. It is responsible for technical consulting throughout the systems development life cycle, for bringing new systems into production, and for planning and managing changes to existing applications and operating environments.

Applications Development

Creates, implements and maintains the software for the University's administrative applications. They work with the major administrative departments of the University in performing business analysis, writing or purchasing software applications, integrating them with existing applications, and applying enhancements to the applications as needed due to changes in business practices or government regulations.

There are over 55 administrative applications: some are housed on the University's IBM mainframe, and other are on midrange servers or desktop machines located either centrally or within departments. The major applications include the financial systems (Financial Records, Accounts Payable, Purchasing), the student systems (Admissions, Academic Records, Financial Aid) and the human resource systems (Payroll, Personnel), the directory systems (Brown ID), plus numerous other business-related systems that support functions such as inventory, loans, plant operations, telecommunications etc.

Administrative Systems Technology

Is broken up into several areas, which provide the following services.

Systems Services

The systems programming staff is responsible for the systems software platforms necessary to support administrative computing, including OS/390, VM, and NT. They install and maintain these operating systems as well as a myriad of third party software products. They are responsible for assuring that all security, auditing, and restart/recovery functions are properly operating. They regularly monitor performance and provide capacity planning information

Database Services

The database staff is responsible for database and middleware software, including necessary security, auditing, and restart/recovery procedures. They provide problem support and resolution for complex data integrity issues. The backup and recovery of corporate administrative data is the responsibility of this group. Additionally the database team consults on applications development projects. They are responsible for designing the database schemas to support existing and future business requirements. Data warehousing initiatives are lead by this staff.

Administrative User Services

Ensures that the University's business systems are run accurately and on time. They are responsible for data input services, job setup, submission and verification of administrative applications systems for the custodians of Administrative Information Systems; they maintain a "hot line" for production problems. They are caretakers of the production libraries and are responsible for production turnover and quality control. The staff triage problems related to administrative applications and handle the recovery of failed systems. They serve as user advocates during the implementation of new or changed systems. The are also responsible for the processing and distribution of microfiche produced from production applications.

Technical Support

The technical support area is responsible for providing advice, guidance, and review for the implementation of software systems, application enhancements, and for the resolution of production problems. They are responsible for the effective development and implementation of standards to ensure that key information systems meet a satisfactory quality level. They regularly participate in problem triage and application system recovery efforts.

• Provides 24x7 on-call support
• 130,000 productions jobs per year
• Staff knowledgeable and responsible for:
• 5 operating systems platform
• 57 mainframe systems software products
• 24 database and middle-ware products
• 9 programming languages

Computer Operations

Is responsible for planning, coordination, and analysis of availability data, and the development of procedures and tools to ensure high availability of the network, servers, mainframes, printing facilities, applications software and the computer clusters operated by CIS. These tasks include planning for and supervising the replacement and maintenance of central computing hardware, the development of disaster recovery plans and the training of personnel in disaster recovery operations. The operations staff is responsible for all production activities associated with a large complex computer environment (24 hours, 7 days/wk operations) ensuring proper communication with staff and users. Operations staff is responsible for installing, operating, and maintaining the mainframe computers and networks. They assure the availability of hardware, systems, and applications software, operate the central computers and file servers, and assess the impact of proposed services on production.

• Print, post process and deliver/hand out:
• 7.00 million pages of mainframe output a year
• 0.65 million pages of network printing (mostly student)
• Monitor, backup and support 40 networked (Unix, NetWare, NT ) servers
• Monitor 350 network devices
• Monitor/operate the 2 different mainframe operating systems and all of their components.
• Tape library has over 10,000 volumes
• On call 24x7 for facilities, mainframe and some distributed system problems

Network Technologies & Services

Systems Services

Provides the hardware and software infrastructure for campus-wide services such as electronic mail, the Web, applications distribution, shared file services, and instructional services. This group is responsible for ensuring highly reliable central UNIX, Novell, and NT systems for these campus services.

IT Architecture

Determines the technical architecture underlying all campus services.

Network Technology Group

Is responsible for the design, implementation and evolution of departmental and campus-wide local area networks and general services supporting the entire University. Their responsibilities include: network planning and design, high speed Internet connectivity, testing of new technologies for campus deployment, maintaining and upgrading all systems and electronics on Brown's networks, capacity planning, performance monitoring, IP address maintenance and distribution, systems tuning and troubleshooting network problems. They provide technical support to the other CIS departments and to the University.

Communications Operations

A unit of the Network Technology Group, staff in this area are responsible for maintaining key communications equipment on campus (telephone switch and voice mail system) and the in-building and inter-building wiring over which voice, data and video services are transmitted. Employees in this area install voice, data and video outlets and the electronics which make them work. They work closely with Facilities Management on construction and renovation projects to ensure that voice, data and video requirements are attained. Communications Operations technicians pull inside and outside wiring, manage communication renovation projects and troubleshoot all voice, data and video transmission problems in the more than 230 buildings housing Brown employees and students.

IT Security

The security group manages the development and delivery of security standards, policies, best practices, and solutions to ensure information security across the University. It provides direction in technology trends for system administrators and University administrators; enforces security policies and procedures by monitoring data security; investigates possible security exceptions; updates, maintains and documents security controls. This group also provides departments with security services including training programs, authentication and vulnerability analysis; serves as key campus data security contact with relevant groups outside the University. IT Security is responsible for defining an acceptable level of security for the computing environment at Brown, and ensuring that Brown¹s IT infrastructure, policies and standards comply with existing laws and regulations.

CIS Administration

This area is responsible for the overall administration of CIS. It includes the Vice President's position, plus the administrative and support staff use to manage the department's financial, human resource, documentation, communications, purchasing and space needs.