IT Virtual Town Hall - May 24

John opened the meeting reflecting on a large number of projects on track this fiscal year. He chose to highlight a few (of many): 

Next Generation Network, a huge strategic objective to harden the institution’s infrastructure and rebuild its networking fabric, continues to march along. We have made progress settling out the research use cases and helping structure the way we are thinking about transitioning some of the specialized labs on campus. A number of the medical campus building deployments are now complete.

John shared that it’s been interesting to watch the build-out towards the goals that we shared with the board two years ago on the information security side. He sees good evidence that each of you is working the security program’s expectations into all of our projects and operational work. John thanked the staff for the progress on those specific security objectives, and how staff members interpret their guidance on how we do other work across the institution. To quote Paul, “Security is not information security’s job—it’s everybody’s job.”

There has been a lot of work over the last six to seven months in the public safety area. The 21st century policing initiative involves rethinking many factors around public safety and policing and is a national effort; however, it’s also been affecting Yale. In that context, we have identified several initiatives that involve information technology and infrastructure more broadly. IT’s collaboration with Ronnell Higgins and his team has introduced some great institution-wide thinking. These efforts will shape the future of projects like radio systems, mass notifications, and other items that have more broad-based implications across many Yale units. 

Workday time tracking, a long-awaited project, is coming to a close in the next couple of weeks. Technical work and collaborations from our team to help ready the community for the launch have been vital, and many are looking forward to the transition.

The Graduate Student Payment System (GSPS) was handled remarkably well from John’s perspective, nailing the redesign and then leveraging existing products such as Workday and Banner as the foundation for the retirement of a very challenged custom application. This type of strategy exemplifies collaborative design and process-based work that can set the stage for foundational changes at the institution.

Next, John shared updates related to balanced scorecard initiatives tied explicitly to our three strategic anchors that are progressing. These include IT governance, service level agreement (SLA) development, standardized tools for internal processes, financial oversight, and our nine workplace survey initiatives. The results show how these are starting to influence our engagement. John plans to do a little bit of a retrospective of what has been accomplished in FY21 as we get closer to July. 

Next, John reiterated that the pandemic continues to be extremely serious in India, South America, and other parts of the world. John recognizes that staff with family members in those areas will continue to feel the impact, and he hopes that they will find some safety soon. 

In contrast, overall health data in Connecticut is remarkable. Vaccination rates are among the highest in the nation, and infection rates are incredibly low. Most of the statewide public health measures are starting to lift and we see a rapid return to pre-pandemic activities. Presumptions that we established several months ago that would bind our return to work strategy are largely proving as expected. By June, the situation should improve enough that we can contemplate a more staged return to work. Citing the message sent by Scott Strobel and Jack Callahan last week, John reminded us that teams are now defining some of the parameters for the institutional return to work. John followed this with a message expressing more details about how we are thinking about this for Information Technology. A few highlights include: 

Many of the staff learned to work from home through the pandemic and wish to continue to do so. John acknowledges that many staff members are finding the request to return quite difficult. For many, this challenge will be as hard as, or possibly harder than, departing was. In part, public health conditions have improved so fast that it may be jarring to think about how to safely do that, and some may be cautious about the improving picture. For others, it may be more of a sense that you have proven you can work effectively remotely, and the experience has been beneficial to your work-life balance and productivity, and you do not want to lose that. Still, others share lingering concerns related to finding childcare, eldercare, transportation, and a range of services that you have reliance on that or are still somewhat constrained. While many of these services are returning, there is uncertainty about how they will unfold over the next few months. John understands these concerns but does not have answers to all of them. He invited staff to join the Climate, Culture, and Inclusion check-in call on Thursday, May 27, to share your perspective. Talking with peers about how it affects that conversation will help you  understand how you might work your schedule with your managers to make it work for your needs.

John reiterated that our return to work is a phased return. The period between August 2 and September 15 is designed to help bring about some normalcy so that we are not making a long-term decision under a condition of duress. We will continue to advance the discussion on future ways of working through that interim period. Your active participation and experimentation will help us to learn what will work and to guide our choices about that long term.

Institutionally, it’s been a long time since we have all been together, so long that it’s increasingly hard to remember what  we valued about being together on campus. Presently, there is a false sense of what that ongoing flexible work might look like with such a disproportionate number of colleagues working outside the office. Some of those offices truly do have to return to support a residential community. This interim move is designed to help pull us back into that more real-world condition, where we can get a better gauge on how hybrid will work. Together, we will learn much through this effort, and our findings will shape our long-term choices. I expect more choices to be available in the future.

Mark Manton, the ITS Health and Safety Leadership representative, then spoke on how many prior COVID Corners that he presented were slanted on depressing. Things in Connecticut are awesome, and Mark was proud to be able to share several data points that indicated that Connecticut has shifted from high to medium risk, which is terrific. Mark was also proud that the ACS, EOT, and HSL, and Lead Admin calls have really shifted gears, focusing on commencement and return to campus.

Clinical trials are ensuing now for children ages six months through 11 years old, with the expectation that some increment of that age group will be approved for vaccination between fall 2021 and early 2022. For perspective, there are 50 million people under 12 years old in the United States, so it would be great if the expectation proves to be correct within that time frame.

On May 19, most of the COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in Connecticut. Validation for vaccination status for those vaccinated. There has been some confusion on how that validation will work, depending on which entity you were vaccinated from. Expect more to follow as we are developing some clarity on that. 

The last student to test positive at Yale was on May 4. Since that time, there have been three positive cases: two dependents and one employee. Because of the reduced cases and demand, the Lanman Center is toggling back the frequency and length of each clinic, so we will see less of those. They are talking about dismantling the Center and opening up a smaller place somewhere at Yale. Connecticut continues to do a better job by the Department of Public Health and has a well-put-together four-page document on what you need to know. Mark reminded everyone that if you leave home, know your three “W“ ‘s - Wear (a mask), Wait (six feet apart), and Wash (your hands or use sanitizer regularly) and remember the Campus Covid Resource Line (CCRL): 203-432-6604.

John then commented that he doesn’t expect data and facts to alleviate concerns for some people concerned about the transition back to campus. However, he hopes it may help some people to see that beyond John, the rest of the Yale leadership team has a lot of confidence about the moves we are trying to make to return to some state of normalcy.

What is the plan for equipment on-site versus off-site? Many staff use dual monitor setups and would like to continue to do this from their homes and their desks.

The standard setup is two monitors issued to every person in IT. Depending on how you are thinking about your schedule, you can choose to split the monitors—one at home and one at work. It is not our intent right now to purchase monitors. This is because we do not want to make a short-term decision for this interim return to work. I want to wait until the guidance is clear around future ways of working and what choices we all will have in terms of the models of work.

If we end up in a situation where some portion of you will have long-term remote work or a split hybrid environment, we can start to talk more about the guidance. Those are future decisions, not for today. In this interim period, at least between April and December, we are going to use the equipment we have, and individuals can make decisions about how they use that equipment. 

When will progress be made on the remote work hybrid work arrangements? What prevents the decision from dragging on and being swept under the rug? Are there any timelines around that?

I don’t have a precise timeline. Tim Pavlis and the team are running that into the ground, but I expect us to make some decisions by the end of the year. I do not have a formal commitment from them as to when that work will be complete. Based on conversations to date, I expect this fall period of return to campus will be an experimentation phase, and we will quickly have some decisions toward the end of the year.

Are there are concerns with forcing employees to get vaccinated if it hasn’t been approved by the FDA, and do we have information on any processes for exemption? 

Discussions around the exemption process are underway, as mentioned in Scott and Jack’s note, including a notion of medical and religious exemptions. I don’t yet know what that approval process will look like. That will happen on an institution-wide basis, not through IT. As for the concept of requiring vaccination in the higher education institutional context, this is something that Yale has decided it is comfortable with, as have a great number of our peers. I can not comment on the broader picture of that, but we are in good company in that regard. For those of you who might, for whatever reason, choose not to get vaccinated, I do expect there are going to be some compensating controls. There is still discussion about exactly what that will look like. One can imagine it might include a continuing requirement of daily health checks or some frequency of testing. Something that gives comfort to the vast majority who will be vaccinated—that the unvaccinated population’s health is being monitored regularly to assure our safe work environment. 

There are a few questions about the number of days per week that Yale has decided to ask people to come back. Why three days? Which three days? Will these be flexible or set by managers?

I’m not sure I could unwind the whole conversation on the decision of approximately three days and which three days. You will need to work with your manager—there are some circumstances where having clarity on who is in the office on what days matter. As an example, if you think about a walk-up center, you have to have staff to manage that. As a manager, your whole team needs to have a shared calendar where you can assure a certain level of coverage. For other functions, that matters a lot less. I’ve asked each of the members to work with their respective leaders. 

For the concept of approximately three days a week, this was the best option they could offer to retain as much flexibility as they can for all of you while still meeting overall expectations. In some cases, we have to have a certain defined level of staffing on campus to perform a function. I expect a more prescriptive answer for those areas where that is not the case. You and your manager should decide how best to do the work.

Will IT teams being asked to return to campus in June (e.g., faculty and staff support) be afforded to keep a flexible schedule? If not, why not?

To the best of my knowledge, yes, but again, it goes back to you to work that out with your managers and decide, based on the schedule and coverage. We are trying to achieve what is doable. I have left that to the team managers to decide best with the expectation that we do this as fairly as we can. 

For large meetings, such as those held at 25 Science Park, how will those be conducted safely?

We don’t yet know the public health guidelines on large group gatherings. The public health team continues to monitor State guidelines on that, and we will decide, I suspect, sometime over the next few weeks, how we best want to handle that. For now, event guidelines are posted online, but they may change as state guidelines continue to lift. 

Mark Manton: This is correct, and food is still limited - you can’t have food at these meetings. 

How will IT be handling remote full-time hires made during the pandemic if these full-time employees permanently reside outside of Connecticut? And how will remote working from other states be handled?

There are somewhere around 20 people in ITS who have pre-existing remote work arrangements. Those remote work arrangements that were signed before March of 2020 remain without alteration.

At the moment, we are very hesitant to sign any long-term obligations for new employees or for you (those of you who are here but did not have a pre-existing relationship that dictated a flexible or remote work arrangement) until we have more clarity on the long-term ways of working. There may be some exceptions made—that we would probably have made pre-pandemic. There are some job classifications or categories where we have extreme difficulty hiring, where remote might be used as a vehicle to compel someone who otherwise would not choose to be a part of the community, but I expect these will be very high-level exceptions. In the same way, we are expecting that you know any inability to return during the return period will have to get a very high level of review to be agreed to. In the short term, we are trying not to expand it and instead try to honor the institution-wide return to work that is unfolding. We will deal with a handful of exceptions on a case-by-case basis as we have to.

Julienne Hadley: The Workplace Guidance page on the It’s Your Yale website has a page called Workplace FAQs, where we are consolidating questions from all departments in operations and trying to post answers as we have them. She reminded the team to keep checking. 

John closed by thanking the team for all their efforts to support Yale and reminding the staff that we will work through the challenges ahead. John knows that for many, the return to work is proving to be a challenging concept, and he is open to continuing to talk through how best to make it reasonable.  

An Outlook invitation will be sent for the next IT Virtual Town Hall.