New IT plan unveiled

The UW–Madison’s information technology plan for the 21st century maps out how the university can use IT to achieve its top-level objectives for the new century: promoting research, advancing learning, accelerating internationalization, amplifying the Wisconsin Idea and nurturing human resources.

The university’s Division of Information Technology, principal author of the plan, is currently working on three collaborative initiatives to help advance the plan. They are:

• The university’s major initiative is a campus portal called My UW–Madison. This personalized Web tool will allow every authorized user to interact with the campus in a straightforward and uncomplicated way. The portal was recently enabled for every student, and will be enabled for every staff and faculty member by spring 2002.
• A next-generation backbone network is now in planning. The process includes developing a new funding model to support the operation of the network. The new networking technology will support higher bandwidth applications, as well as implement “quality of service” options for multimedia applications. The university will work with networking vendors, campus customers and a potential source of grant funding to lower capital acquisition costs.
• A new appointments payroll and benefits system will be implemented. Major components of the software package will replace the current payroll and position budgeting systems. A key new component will be employee self-service of benefits.

Annie Stunden, the university’s chief information officer, says she foresees slight revisions for the plan in the coming months, “but the major directions are agreed upon and will not change.”

For details, see: http://www.doit.wisc.edu/about/strpln02.pdf