Annual I&IT Services Measurements and Assessment

July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011

Background

As part of the university’s Assessment Initiative, I&IT was directed to measure, report and assess its service levels for I&IT-provided centralized, widely used services based on industry-standard comparisons. This is a continuation of I&IT’s annual measurements reporting in which I&IT reports its service numbers in the fall of each year for data in the most recently completed fiscal year, which ends each June 30.

Methods

Methods for gathering data were essentially the same as in previous years. That is, the manager responsible for the area provided data. For example, for most Systems and Networks measurements, availability was reported. Availability is calculated as giving the total number of hours a service is available in the year minus unplanned downtime. For the integer data, managers simply counted, reviewed records or had their staff run reports to obtain totals. These types of measurements are objective measures that are commonly used in enterprise information technology.

Target Levels

I&IT practices state that infrastructure service levels such as network and central services availability seek a “5 9s,” or 99.999% availability. Specific targets for other areas, such as the number of technical support service requests, have not been set.

Accessibility	7/1/2010-6/30/2011	7/1/2009-6/30/2010
Purchase Requisitions for Electronic Equipment Reviewed	399	231
Number of requisitions where accessibility information were evaluated	194	170
Products tested as part of reviewing purchase requisitions	12	10

Applications
Bronco Interactive Dashboards	5	2
BID pages (tabs within a dashboard)	30	9
Number of public Data Warehouse reports	30	31
Data Warehouse availability	99.988%	99.988%
BroncoDirect availability	100.000%	100.000%

Central Computing Systems
Number of student email accounts	24,628	24,775
Percentage of students using campus email system	22.454%	30.000%
Number of faculty/staff email accounts	2,305	2,377
Number of other email accounts	5,401	1,242
Total number of email boxes	32,249	37,369
LDAP Directory availability	99.924%	100.000%
Active Directory (WIN domain) availability	99.928%	99.990%
File services (non-Intranet) availability	99.928%	100.000%
DNS/DHCP availability	99.928%	100.000%
Intranet file services availability	99.912%	99.770%
Intranet web services availability	99.912%	99.930%
Exchange email availability	99.926%	100.000%
Mailman (mail distribution group) service availability	99.928%	100.000%
Co-location service availability	100.000%	100.000%
BlackBoard availability	99.917%	99.860%

Central Computing Lab Support
Number of unique lab users	6,637	12, 224
Number of lab computers purchased	0	0

Classroom Technology
Number of LCTI classrooms installed or upgraded	0	0
Lecture classrooms equipped for computer-based, multimedia presentations	211	0
Smart classroom conversion cost (standard to smart)	0	0
Smart classroom equipment refresh cost	33,000	0
Support cost for Smart Classroom use (cables, bulbs, etc.)	17,000	$35,000
Percentage of instruction space as Smart Classrooms	41.900%	41.900%
Smart classroom support calls	849	559

MediaVision
Number of MediaVision productions	410	376
Number of streaming video hits	1,169,146	1,523,296
Streaming video availability	99.850%	99.850%
Number of videos captioned	550	220
Number of live streamed / live captioned events	22	15
Number of audio recordings	98	72

Networking
Percent of full-time faculty workstations with high-speed Internet connections	100.000%	100.000%
Percent of part-time faculty workstations with high-speed Internet connections	100.000%	100.000%
Percent of staff workstations with high-speed Internet connections	100.000%	100.000%
Percent of student workstations with high-speed Internet connections	100.000%	100.000%
Percent of classrooms with high-speed Internet connections	100.000%	100.000%
Number of minutes planned downtime (best month)	0	0
Number of minutes of unplanned downtime (best month)	0	0
Number of minutes of planned downtime (worst month)	15	90
Number of minutes unplanned downtime (worst month)	0	34
Average Internet bandwidth utilization	59.010%	25.000%
Peak Internet bandwidth utilization	90.420%	48.000%
Wireless coverage, instructional spaces (classrooms, laboratories, seminar rooms)	90.000%	15.000%
Wireless coverage – library	100.000%	100.000%
Wireless coverage – dormitories	10.000%	10.000%
Wireless coverage - open space	50.000%	50.000%
Wireless coverage - Bronco Student Center and Bookstore	90.000%	90.000%
Campus Internet connection speed	1Gbits/s	1Gbits/s
Inbound traffic (95th average megabits per second)	502.42Mbps	180.46Mbps
Outbound traffic (95th average megabits per second)	118.39Mbps	50.27Mbps
Number of wireless users (peak)	5975	2481
Number of telecommunications work order requests	481	380
Work order program availability	99.977%	99.990%
Internet availability	100.000%	99.990%
Virtual private network availability	99.977%	99.990%
Long distance voice availability	99.977%	99.999%
Voice mail availability	99.946%	99.900%

User Support
Number of calls to 869-POLY	104,405	116,659
Abandonment call rate to 869-POLY	6.880%	5.521%
Peak volume day, number of calls	856	1,125
Lowest volume day, number of calls	237	5
Total Help Desk tickets	25,045	21,519
E-mail Setup/Troubleshooting/Client	3,049	1,762
Distribution Lists	189	92
Account Questions	3,586	2,752
Blackboard Questions/Issues	1,763	965
Password Reset Questions/Issues	6,920	5,968
PeopleSoft/BroncoDirect Questions/Issues	1,481	1,172
Application Support	434	111
File Services/Web Page Upload/Troubleshoot/Quota	342	556
Desktop/Laptop Support Questions/Issues	3,287	341
Wireless	1,004	1,350
Classroom/Lab Support Questions	977	465
Software Licensing/Distribution/Availability	328	517
Network (non-classroom)	808	214
Call Transfers	4,555	426
Miscellaneous	1,388	809
Number of emails to helpdesk@csupomona.edu	9,365	10,162
Total Help Desk Tickets, emails	40,527	31,681

Analysis

Accessibility

I&IT’s charge to assure compliance with federal Sections 504 and 508 continued strong. I&IT reviewed a record number of requisitions for statute compliance. Two primary reasons led to this. First, there was an increase in campus spending last year for electronic equipment. Second, I&IT began reviewing purchase card acquisitions for the first time. Many purchases of electronic equipment are made via purchase (credit) cards.

Applications

Bronco Intelligent Dashboard (BID) queries increased because of a focused effort on this area. The BID team produced several new BID pages, including those dedicated to student registration records and reports.

Central Computing Systems

The percentage of students using campus email accounts decreased because of the outsourcing of student email to Microsoft Outlook Live.

Lower availability for Active Directory, file services, DNS/DHCP and mailman was caused by a single event which affected all of these services. This was a three-hour failure in electrical power that fed the central data center. Without this single outage, availability rates for these services would have been 100.000%.

Central Computing Lab Support, Classroom Technology

There were no new Learning Centered Technology Initiative (LCTI) classrooms upgraded because of budgetary restrictions. However, 31 new classrooms were upgraded during the summer of 2011, a figure that will appear on next year’s report.

MediaVision

The number of video productions increased this year. The number of streaming video hits decreased nearly 25% from the previous year. This decline resulted from newer methods of distribution in multiple formats: YouTube, Flash server and streaming video server. The number of streaming video server hits is for the streaming video server only.

The number of audio productions increased nearly 27%. More requests for audio used in online classes is the most likely explanation for the increase.

Networking

The networking function reported 100% Internet availability. This is the first time since I&IT started tracking this category that 100% availability was achieved. This was the result of constant connectivity to the university’s Internet Service Provider, CENIC. Additionally, following an Internet outage the previous year, I&IT’s Networks group revised how its equipment is configured at the university’s Internet connection, resulting in a more efficient connection.

User Support

I&IT’s service requests continued to outpace the previous year. An important factor here was that I&IT took on all but one of the colleges’ technical support services.

Account questions increased because of a higher number of student applicants. Blackboard queries increased because of the upgrade to Blackboard 9.1. Call transfers increased because more calls needed to be directed to Admissions and Financial Aid. Email configuration service requests increased because of more use of smart phones and the shift of student email to Microsoft Outlook Live.

The call abandonment rate for the university’s switchboard increased slightly. This was because of extended personnel outages where I&IT had to move temporary students into the role of switchboard operators.

Action Items from last year Reviewed

Action Item from last year: Outsource student email. Result: Mostly completed with the remaining students still on Exchange moving to Microsoft Live by January, 2012.

Action Item from last year: Continue to virtualize file servers (an information technology practice of combining several non-high volume file servers into single physical file servers). Result: Achieved, based on continuing the virtualization of servers.

Action Item from last year: Achieve total integration of the Academic Affairs Technicians into various areas of I&IT. Result: Achieved for all academic technical support brought under I&IT.

Action Item from last year: Market eHelp quarterly. Result: Change of strategy deleted this action item. eHelp is being converted to an interactive wiki.

Action Items for next year

Among Action Items for the 2011-2012 year will include:

Build more smart classrooms.
Collaborate with university stake holders to produce videos that highlight the unique nature of Cal Poly Pomona programs and people.
Leverage video-enhanced social media to connect with students, faculty and staff.
Develop synergies between the unit that supports end-user laptops and desktop computers with those supporting classrooms and labs so any of the technicians in those units can respond to service requests for state-owned computers in offices, classrooms, labs or common areas such as conference rooms.

This page was last updated on April 4, 2012.