Managing door access at the College of Engineering used to be a complex and time-consuming endeavor involving both technical and administrative staff. Even without its new annex, the college had 177 doors with electronic access control. The Iowa One Cards of nearly 3,000 students, faculty, and staff had to be manually provisioned to swipe into the appropriate classrooms, labs, conference rooms, and offices. 

Responding to peak workload periods became a bit more manageable when the Division of Student Life adopted the new OneIT shared service model for end user support. The change means the division’s technology experts are now part of a larger team of IT support professionals who help each other out to meet the needs of customers—especially in high-demand times.

The Helium high-performance computing system was shut down Dec. 1, and installation of the replacement Argon HPC system is underway. Argon is scheduled to be full-service by March 2017.

Nearly all UI websites are now on the same content-management system, Drupal—and using common technology yields a host of benefits, like cost savings, greater expertise, and sharing custom modules.

UI ranks first in the nation in an assessment of how accessible its websites are to people with disabilities.

As part of task force recommendations to elevate the role of human resources on campus, the Information Management/Human Resources (IM/HR) workgroup is transitioning into ITS-Administrative Information Systems.

​This week t​he ​Information Security and Policy Office announced a reorganization, through which Enterprise Services staff responsible for IT accessibility services and support will join​ the department and two new workgroups will be formed. The office is also currently advertising a new senior IT security analyst position.  

Several professionals from the OneIT community won Improving Our Workplace Awards (IOWA) in recognition of innovative projects that have a lasting positive impact on the institution. Senior Software Developer Michael Alberhasky of Information Technology Services (ITS) won an individual award for creating a HawkID password reset tool. A team award went to the Drupal Digital Signage Team, which through tremendous collaboration launched a cost-effective and user-friendly service for electronic billboards on campus.

The switch to a tiny but mighty compute stick is saving departments time, money and hassle when it comes to powering digital signage across campus.