Tuesday, June 30, 2020

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.

Carver College of Medicine "Clerx" Software Development Team

Accredited medical schools require an electronic system to monitor and ensure students complete essential patient-care encounters, referred to as required clinical experiences (RCEs).

RCEs represent types of patients, conditions, and skills or procedures that students observe, assist with, or independently perform. Carver College of Medicine (CCOM) previously relied on vended applications for tracking RCEs, but challenges with the vended tool nudged them to look into alternatives.

An inter-departmental team with members from the Office of Student Affairs and Curriculum (OSAC), the CCOM Office of Information Technology (CCOMIT), UIHC Surgery, and UIHC Pediatrics formed to develop a customized solution to meet the needs of students, clerkship coordinators, and OSAC and CCOM administration. 

The new software allows students to access the application on mobile devices. They are automatically directed to the clerkship in which they are enrolled and associated RCEs, and can log completion and view progress via a dashboard. Administrators can immediately view RCE completion rates for all students, as well as a detailed version of individual student progress and gaps. Verification of additional accreditation standards can now be measured.

Team Members: David Calvert, Eric Embree, Patrick Flanagan, Shannon Manley, Duane Staskal, Hugh Hansen, Dana Hartman, Dr. Amal Shibli-Rahhal, Cathy Chavez, Cate Unruh

Parking Services Office and FBIS Business Application Development

The Parking Services Office used three disconnected systems to manage employee parking privileges campus-wide: a legacy waitlist system and two vended applications (AiMS and iPARCS). The systems aided in parking processes such as requesting to be on a waitlist for a parking lot, managing permit assignments, and providing access cards to gated parking lots. The disconnected systems led to errors and confusion among users requesting parking access.

The team set out to improve the accuracy, effectiveness, and efficiency of the process. Modernizing the parking waitlist application streamlined the process of reviewing, offering, and approval of permits. The second part of the project involved automatically synchronizing AiMS permit and location assignments to iPARC card-access group assignments. The team’s innovation allowed users to make requests online rather than in-person and cut down the time of requesting parking waitlists, errors, and lag time.

Team Members: Vladimir Avdonin, Sarah Crafton, James Dasen, Jacob David Feuerbach, Vamsilatha Gorlagunta, Carol Ann Leinhauser, Rachel Marie Maddix, Valerij Petrulevich, Sherry Reynolds-Miller, Delores Lynn Skoff, Taylorel Stutts, John Thomas, Laurant Vance, Chik-Lun Woo, Changhui XU

Password Synchronization Team

UI Health Care faculty, staff, and students used two primary user IDs for campus logins: a HawkID to access university systems supported by OneIT and a Healthcare ID to access systems within Health Care Information Systems. The two logins had significant disconnects with password policies and timelines to update passwords, making it difficult for users to manually synchronize the accounts.

The Information Security and Policy Office helped align the two password policies, making the expiration timeline of the two logins match up. This allowed for the next step of the password synchronization to happen–developing and installing the software on the domain controllers in Healthcare and Iowa domains. When a domain controller received notification that a user changed their password, the code developed by the team informed all the domain controllers to update the passwords to match the newly updated password. This is all done behind the scenes in a matter of seconds. Over the next year, all users will be prompted to update their password and the synchronization will be ubiquitous.

Team Members: Michael Cullison, William Dawson, Robert Heitman, Dan Kitzmann, Dan Metzler, Luke Molony, Jordan O'Konek, Daniel Worrell

Email Anti-Phishing Team

UI email systems previously experienced a significant increase in phishing attacks. Several hundred accounts were compromised per day causing a wide range of issues.

After analysis to identify high-risk populations, a targeted communication campaign was developed to raise awareness of common phishing pitfalls. Websites and support information were created to inform users of known phishing messages, tips for avoiding phishing, and how to report a suspicious message. Adding an [External] tag to non-UI emails helped users identify messages from other email systems that could potentially be phishing. Email and IT security staff created new automated processes to quickly identify and secure compromised accounts.

These efforts reduced account comprises to less than 80 per month, increasing trust in the email system, saving hundreds of staff hours that would have been spent dealing with account compromises, and preventing the university from having to buy costly anti-phishing software.

Team Members: Tracy Scott, Katie Kahler, Ryan Lenger, Matt Kaufman, Craig Wilkinson, Steve Troester, Daniel Worrell, Em Domingues, Jordan O’Konek, Joey Kirkpatrick, Deb Yoder, Teresa Rose, Lisa Schintler, Dan Metzler, Laurie Hafner Dahms, Dan Dirks, Adrienne Coon, Nicole Dahya, Lin Larson, Zach Furst, Nikki Cardenas, Jamie Matthews, Michael Alberhasky, Matt Depaepe