IT virtual Town Hall recap - March 5, 2021

    March 18, 2021

    John opened the meeting by reflecting on some recent challenges in our backdrop. From the massive public utility failure a few weeks ago in Texas to the balancing act that public schools face, closing when they have COVID-19 cases while experiencing continued high-pressure to reopen. He referenced heart-wrenching topics on our minds, including the upcoming trial for the officer involved in killing George Floyd and the over 500,000 COVID-19 related deaths in the US (2.5 million worldwide) as of February 22. John reflected that “everyone, including me, is tired and stressed—if you feel a little off-balance, you should know that it’s really okay. It’s normal and understandable. Continue to make room to talk to your colleagues.”
     
    With all that, he cited many reasons for optimism: 
     
    Spring semester is underway, with about 10,000 people a day on campus. The initial arrival quarantine period for students has concluded, and campus and community activities have picked up as a result. While classes continue to be predominantly distance learning on a modified academic schedule, students frequent campus areas more and comply with all the public health measures to stay safe. Our campus COVID-19 rate is very, very good.
     
    Programmatically, our work continues at an excellent pace, as well. Our projects are mainly on track, and operational quality continues to be very good. The cadence each day continues to pivot more back to normal. While we still have new things we’ve built to support the community during the COVID-19 pandemic, most of these things have been operationalized and are functioning well.
     
    We are ramping up for a discussion on the public safety data center. There’s been a great deal of work around the 21CP Solutions report—a comprehensive assessment of our campus police department. Within the report, there are several technology recommendations, and through that work, it became clear that they have some fragmented and aging assets from a data center perspective. The team is working to define a plan for incorporating those assets into the university data center, setting them on better footing, and incorporating their needs to help strengthen the university data center standards.
     
    We recently completed DUO Everywhere’s rollout, which marks a considerable step forward in improving university (IT) security. Our credential loss through phishing has been dramatically reduced almost overnight through that program. It’s one of many steps still ahead for us and our security journey, but a positive step forward.
     
    Working with Facilities over the last several months, we secured approval to move forward with an improved distribution center for the network on the medical campus in The Anlyan Center (TAC) building. That has been a crucial step for us in terms of the network connections’ resiliency, particularly for the clinical portion of campus. 
     
    More broadly, we have settled out the NGN project design, and we’re moving into accelerating deployments. That has been a significant coordinated effort across facilities and building occupants. In particular, we’re settling through how we’re resolving racking gear and appropriate closets, requiring a memorandum of understanding change; teams are working on drafting this now. We expect instruction on the TAC NVU, which will begin in the coming months.
     

    The Audio-Visual team is gearing up for a big summer and beginning to think about renewal and replacement activities, coordinating closely with the deans and the registrar’s office, trying to anticipate the technology needs for fall. We expect a return to primarily in-person learning. Because of educational deferrals, we will likely have our largest class of students at Yale. There remains a fair amount of uncertainty on exactly what degree of hybrid or online learning to expect, and we are seeking to clarify that now.  

    For our balanced scorecard, many of you have helped over the last several months to define three-year roadmaps for each service. These have been instrumental to our conversations with the IT Governance group, creating clarity about future area investments so that the planning work could take on an improved level of precision. 
     
    Our efforts to improve project management methodology over the last couple of years are starting to translate into something much bigger. Lisa and her team are beginning to get asked to help support tracking and engagement on broader operational initiatives, expanding beyond just technology projects to helping work on process and organizational work for all of Jack’s units. These efforts are still evolving, but that coordination and consistency of practice can be transformative for the university and help with what you often hear Jack Callahan say—to build bridges between the archipelagos at Yale.
     
    We are making some vital progress on incidents and refining procedures, defining how we capture and elevate the most critical institutional risks to improve them. In the coming months, we will do a security incident tabletop exercise. Our processes here are maturing, and John expressed his gratitude towards that progress.  
     
    Lastly, John referenced that the work on service level agreements (SLAs) is beginning in earnest, with the expectation that we will conclude drafting SLAs for all services by the end of Fiscal Year 22. SLAs are critically important work. Some staff may be unclear as to why we are focusing on SLAs. We have work to do to help clarify this more for all of you; however, it is essential to know that a service level defines our commitments to the community we support and is the basis of how we want to manage the relationships in the future. A good SLA provides clarity on the service level investment of resources and the boundaries of expectations for each of you. As you think about that work, John hopes you can make that connection to the broader objective.
     
    John then reminded staff about the ITS Remote Work survey, which requested that staff share their personal preferences post-COVID. He is aware there is an eagerness to understand options for a flexible work arrangement. John hopes to see choices that blend your goals with institutional needs and respect what you’ve shown us to be possible through your work over the pandemic. He shared that institution-wide committee work is underway now, and we hope to have clarity on choices this summer. John asked staff to remain patient as the committee considers a series of big institutional decisions that blend different considerations. He shared his expectation that by early spring, we will begin to collect information about how individuals or teams would benefit by being on campus and how the leadership team is thinking about our potential options. By June, we expect those previously not authorized to be on campus may begin to use the office again. While guidance is still evolving, we expect that by August 1, everyone that does not have some form of documented agreement around an alternative or flexible work arrangement will return to working on campus.
     
    We do not expect to change the office layout for our return but instead have set the timetable for our return based on when we expect it to be safe to do so.

    Progress elsewhere on campus

    • At Schwarzman Center, the hard hats are essentially gone, and we are moving into a state of readiness with that new facility.
    • Regarding the Humanities Quad, the movement of faculty began last week.
    • John confirmed with Duane Lovello that we are on track for increased security patrols at Science Park by June of this year. 

    COVID Corner

    One of the principal reasons for optimism is the structured timeline for our return, based on the vaccines’ progress. The data is very encouraging. All three vaccines have essentially proven to be 100% effective at preventing severe disease and hospitalization—a remarkable feat.
     
    Last week, Mark Manton asked Dr. Saad Omer, Director of the Yale Institute for Global Health and an infectious disease specialist at Yale, to join the IT COVID Corner call. Dr. Omer has been instrumental in helping guide our response in the State of Connecticut and at Yale, and we have prepared a short outtake video that covers the following questions: 
     
    • Are the vaccines safe, considering how quickly they were deployed?
    • Are there any symptoms I could get after receiving the vaccine?
    • Can I acquire or transmit COVID-19 even after I am vaccinated?
    • What would you tell someone who is hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine?
     
     
    John hopes you all found it reassuring to hear from one of the foremost public health experts in the country about the facts. He hopes Dr. Omer answered some of the questions that people have asked, which John did not feel he was qualified to answer. John also shared that when he gets the opportunity to take the vaccine, he will and hopes you do, too, if the benefits outweigh your risks.

    The following questions, and John Barden’s answers, were taken from the March 5 virtual IT Town Hall meeting, including questions submitted via the Ask John survey.

    How would you improve air quality at Science Park to make it safe for everyone to return?

    Colleagues within University Properties, Winstanley Management, Yale Engineering, and Yale Environmental Health and Safety continue to partner to ensure that air quality at 25 Science Park is well managed. During the pandemic, all HVAC systems have continued running. Teams have performed maintenance and regularly replaced filters. Additionally, enhanced daily disinfecting of frequently touched surfaces has continued.

    Do we know when the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be available at Yale? Will Yale require vaccination for those scheduled to return to campus?

    John mentioned that he thought the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is already working its way into our pipeline. He believes people getting vaccinated at Yale might receive any of the three variants.

    Regarding requirements, due to Federal Emergency Use Authorizations, vaccination cannot be mandated, at least not at this point, until the government lifts the Emergency Use Authorization.

    In his information, Dr. Omer stated that they are waiting for a preponderance of evidence in a large enough data set to feel confident about how the transmission works post-vaccination. However, there is still growing evidence that suggests if you choose to take the vaccine, but your neighbor does not you still protect yourself from severe disease. This information changes the incentive’s nature; if you want to protect yourself from this disease, take the vaccine. The fact that someone might choose not to vaccinate likely causes more severe risks to them than to you.

    Do we know if there is a plan for Distributed Support Providers (DSPs) to be vaccinated?

    The way Connecticut chose to roll this out is using an age-based methodology. The state plan does not distinguish based on pre-existing health conditions or define essential worker status beyond the direct healthcare frontline workers. So we expect the state guidance to define the methodology for you.

    Will a hybrid work schedule be offered after August 1?

    We have talked about this a lot. While I would like to have this information to share, I am waiting to hear more from the broad-based university-wide committee currently looking at flexible work arrangements policies. IT will not act independently on those decisions; those things are, at this point, waiting on the committee to determine what they perceive to be the best choices for the institution. Nor am I clear what those alternatives will look like, but I believe that we will have clarity by the time we get to August. Without further details from the committee, we can not answer questions like: if I choose to work remotely, what is my office location? Is someone going to cover my internet costs?

    After a recent zoom bombing article in IT Update, multiple people reached out with questions. Answers to these questions were provided in the article. If we can’t read our own articles and communications, how can we expect our clients to read them?

    Yale’s culture has been historically relationship-based, so the fact that someone picks up the phone and calls you is simultaneously the best response and not ideal. We are trying to shape that culture differently by driving towards process and documentation work.

    When you get a question that is already referenced either in a knowledge article or through our IT publications, such as the bi-weekly IT Update newsletter, I think it’d be great (if you know the person well enough) to say one of the following things:

    • Last Thursday’s newsletter contained that information
    • You can find that answer in the knowledge base articles
    • I remember seeing that information on the IT Service Portal website

    Follow up by asking the person to look at that first and, if they still have questions, reach out to you. Additionally, we are striving to keep these knowledge articles up to date and share information that is important to you through our newsletter, so please realize we’re putting a lot of effort into keeping those things current.

    The history, unfortunately, where many service areas fail, is that related links and data become stale, and therefore people aren’t sure that these reflect the best guidance. The good news is they know to call the right person and have the conversation. The bad news is we haven’t yet won over people’s confidence that we keep the data we publish up-to-date and accurate. We will have to continue to reinforce that. Still, I encourage you to use each of those interactions as an opportunity to remind people where they can find the resources themselves.

    The process of how IT decides what to license and on what terms is mysterious, and in some cases, there’s no technical support for that; can you remark on that a little bit?

    There are a number of us who have been spending some time thinking about the software catalog. I agree there’s a fair amount of this that has been historically mysterious, and we’re trying to change that. Most notably, a few weeks back, we had a long conversation with the ITS Advisory Committee, a faculty advisory group that helps us talk through some of these things. One of the opportunities they encouraged was for better clarification on what titles are available for which populations. The second recommendation was to define a more explicit piloting program to let people know what technologies we’re experimenting with and build a process around soliciting formal feedback. This feedback could inform IT about whether something should continue or not, as an emerging need. The third was to better track utilization data to confirm the usage and need for continuing existing licenses or terminate those lesser utilized. Freeing underutilized licenses keeps the license model consistent with the campus’s needs. I expect some of these to evolve over the next year. 

    John closed the meeting reminding everyone to stay safe, reiterating that there’s a light at the end of this tunnel and sharing his hope that we will be rounding back to some sense of normalcy by the summer. 

    The next IT Virtual Town Hall will be from 9:00 - 9:30 a.m. on March 26, 2021.