OCIONEWSLETTER Issue 4 • JUL 2011
SPOTLIGHT
University-wide Web Redesign Project Andy Chun The University is currently embarking on its first ever University-wide web redesign project. The University top-level website has been revamped several times over the years, but these efforts are limited to only the top-level pages. There has never been a wide-scale project to revamp all the departments’, colleges’, schools’, and administrative units’ websites, until now. This project was proposed and discussed in 16 February 2011 in the “Task Force on Campus IT Needs,” which is co-chaired by Prof. Jeffrey Shaw and Prof. K.K. Wei, with representatives from many schools, colleges, departments and units. The Task Force agreed that the University website is an important channel for the University to present its corporate image to the global community, so it is imperative that we leverage this important channel to project a brand image that is consistent with our current global standing as well as in line with the University’s strategy in promoting globalization and internationalization. Therefore, the Task Force recommended that we proceed with a University-wide web redesign project. The project started early this year and is targeted to be completed by the end of 2011. This University-wide web redesign project has many objectives:
• Improve Brand Image This is probably the main objective of the project. To be a globally recognizable brand, the University needs to ensure all touchpoints with our stakeholders project the same and consistent image of the University that is in line with the University’s vision of a leading global University.
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The web redesign project will work closely with the University rebranding project in this aspect. The rebranding project is led by our Communications and Public Relations Office (CPRO). For the web, improving brand image means all our websites are instantly recognizable as a CityU website, through consistent use of our logo and name and our University colors as well as other visual elements and visual cues.
• Improve Usability and User Experience Another key objective of the web redesign project is to improve our website usability and our online visitors’ user experience. This involves designing a consistent layout with consistent placement of common functions, consistent navigation mechanism and consistent interactivity, allowing visitors to be able to easily navigate and find information while moving among different departmental and unit websites. Central IT will provide a standardized but customizable template design for all departments and units to adopt and modify. The template will allow departments and units to add a bit of their branding, such as departmental logo and color, while maintaining University-wide brand image. An associated web style guideline will be provided.
• Improve Information Architecture Our website’s main function is, of course, to provide information to the global community. To provide a consistent user experience, we need to ensure that information provided by all our academic departments is organized similarly; consistent information architecture design is crucial to a user friendly website. Central IT performed a review of our current departmental websites and conducted a general task analysis based on a set of common user personas that represent our
key stakeholders. The result of this exercise is a standardized information architecture design and standardized departmental sitemap. Academic departments can use this design provided by central IT and adopt and extend to suit their particular needs.
• Improve Online Presence No matter how rich our content is, if people cannot access it, it is quite useless. In this regard, the web redesign project will provide a set of guidelines to ensure all our departmental websites follow web standards and accessibility guidelines and best practice, including guidelines to support mobile devices and search engine optimization. This will allow
our web content to be accessible by anyone and anywhere using any device. To accomplish the above by the end of 2011, the departments and Central IT have much to do. Central IT has been working on the initial design stage since early 2011. Draft versions of the design templates, related standards and guidelines are already available. We expect the individual departments to begin the redesign process in July so that their websites will be completed on time. We expect the final versions of the design templates to be released by early August for department use. Sharing sessions will be organized by Central IT to explain the process and suggest approaches to the departments.
FUN ZONE
Wordoku Try to fill in `D & I @CityU’ in the Wordoku below, and the solution can be found on the last page of the Newsletter.
Issue 4 • Jul 2011
BRIEF UPDATES
Programme Code for the 4-Year Undergraduate Degree Annie Ip
In 2012, the University will adopt a new admission model for the 4-year undergraduate degree. Unlike the current model where students of 3-year undergraduate programmes are admitted into a specific programme of study, students enrolling for the 4-Year undergraduate degree will firstly be admitted into Colleges/Schools and will select their major after their first year of study. Under JUPAS, there will only be one admission code for each College/ School (except CSE). Given this change in the admission model, the current set of programme codes that categorize students for student management functions are no longer applicable. To accommodate this, the University will implement a new programme coding scheme for the 4-year undergraduate degree. Under the new coding scheme, all majors associated with the same degree of a College/School are grouped under a single programme code. First year undergraduate students of a College will enroll in the same programme code with an undeclared major upon admission, and will change to another major under the same programme code
after declaring their major. To distinguish the 4-year programme code from the 3-year programme code, the 4-year programme code will carry a suffix “4”, e.g. BBA4. For the “4-1” and the “4-2” curricula, the suffix “4” is replaced by “3” (e.g. BBA3) and “2” (e.g. BBA2) respectively. Under this coding scheme, both the programme code and major are needed to identify the degree and major that the students are pursuing in the University, as well as their home departments. More
details about the new programme codes can be found at the University’s “334 Academic Reform” website (http://www.cityu.edu. hk/334/). The new set of programme codes will be applied to the nominated programmes for early introduction in 2011/12, and to all 4-year undergraduate degrees in 2012/13. For programmes nominated for early introduction in 2010/11, the programme codes will be converted to the new codes in Semester A 2011/12.
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DISCOVER & INNOVATE
Brief Report on Mobile Learning Pilot Crusher Wong
According to the pilot plan, around 400 mobile devices (consisting of iPad & iPod touch) were purchased to support mobile learning in semester B 2010/2011. Students enrolled in eight courses offered by the AIS, the BCH, the EE and the IS had participated in two different modes of use to suit the particular pedagogical approaches. Long term loan of mobile device was provided to over 220 students until the end of the semester while another population of 192 received the devices during class time only. Invitations to complete online survey (Note 1) were sent at the end of the semester to both groups to gauge their perception on m-learning. 169 entries were recorded on Qualtrics, a cloud based online survey platform, responding to the m-learning student survey consisting of 5 MC questions and an open ended one. The results were shared among CityU colleagues, friends from other local tertiary institutions and delegates from Apple & Beenet (local reseller of Blackboard products) in the CityU Blackboard User Group meeting on 3 May 2011. Q1 and Q2 addressed the effectiveness of m-learning inside and outside classroom separately. Over 60% of respondents believed the m-learning was very useful or useful. Only about 10% rated it not useful in both cases. Interestingly, even more students (78%) had good or very good experience with the Bb Mobile Learn App – the application software supplied by Blackboard Inc. for mobile devices to access the Bb Learn. Before the pilot, there was some concern that technical difficulties might seriously hinder the pilot and reduce the confidence of the users in employing mobile technologies for teaching and
learning. Fortunately, less than 9% of the students had encountered technical issues frequently comparing to over 30% of them who never had any problem at all (Note 2). Encouragingly, over 70% of respondents would consider purchasing a mobile device to support their studies at CityU. Hopefully this meant they believe in the pedagogical value of m-learning. A total of 55 students had submitted written comments. The limitations of the mobile devices and the Bb Mobile App were listed 8 and 5 times respectively. Five requested for a mobile device long term loan scheme. The issue of diverting students’ attention to their studies and the advantage of enabling out of classroom learning both registered 4 counts. Students also mentioned the following items in 3 instances: late delivery of mobile devices, request to buy the iPad/ iPod touch (he/she was using) after the pilot, continuation of m-learning at CityU, concern about the high cost of ownership of mobile devices, expansion of user support and preferences in certain
devices over another. In general, students valued the opportunity of taking part in the m-learning pilot and favored the acquisition of mobile device for use. They understood that a smart phone or tablet was not a full-function computer which more efforts might be needed to further unleash the power of m-learning. After all, the mobile learning pilot would not be possible without the support from colleagues. We would like to thank Professor Lilian Vrijmoed (BCH), Dr Ray Cheung (EE), Dr Terence Cheung (IS), Dr Ron Kwok (IS) and Dr Justin Robertson (AIS) for their pioneer work to initiate m-learning in their courses, bringing e-learning at CityU to the next level. The contributions from CSC colleagues in acquisition of iPods and iPod touches and facilitation of a robust WiFi network are highly appreciated. At the same time, support staff in departments has contributed extra effort to manage and distribute the mobile devices demonstrating their professionalism.
Note: i.) Below are the results of the m-learning Student Survey:
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ii.) Only 168 responses were received in Q4.
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IT Security Awareness Series by JUCC With an aim to enhancing the IT security awareness of the CityU community, the KPMG was commissioned by the Joint Universities Computer Centre (JUCC) to prepare a series of articles on IT security and they will be adopted and published here for your reference.
Business Continuity Management I. Background As a holistic process to identify potential threats to an organisation and the impacts that those threats might cause to operations, Business Continuity Management (BCM) provides a framework for building organisational resilience with the capability for an effective response to safeguard key stakeholders’ interests, reputation and value-creating activities.
Industry Story Highlights from the Gartner Business Continuity Management Summit BCM is an established part of the preparations for the possible threats posed to organisations, whether from internal systems failures or external emergencies such as extreme weather, terrorism, or infectious disease. In a BCM summit by Gartner, 71 per cent of respondents claim that BCM is regarded as important by senior management in their organisation in 2010. This may reflect increased awareness of the importance of BCM following the high-profile disruptions experienced across in the UK in 2010, such as the extreme winter weather. See the article: http://www.managers. org.uk/sites/default/files/u217/ Disruption_Resilience_2010.pdf
Why Universities need Business Continuity Management In today’s universities, IT has become an essential component in various operational processes including financial accounting, communication,
academic research and teaching. Such intensive reliance on IT demands high levels of system resilience and effective contingency plans for possible system outages. With BCM, universities would be able to recover critical operations during various disruptions including system outage. BCM will be especially important if a university relies on IT processes under the following circumstances: • Student registration and administration process are highly automated via web portals; • Traditional paper-based information, such as staff/student records, academic research papers, sensitive financial data, are being digitalised; • External IT vendors are employed to provide services on critical IT processes; and • Certain information resources or processes are consolidated and shared among multiple universities, for example shared IT service centres.
II. Management Facing with increased exposure to new risks and a decreasing tolerance for disruptions to their operations, universities may find it prudent to evaluate their ability to respond to crisis and mitigate possible future risks.
organisation by reviewing what its objectives are, how it works functionally and the constraints of the environment where it operates. Several tools and methodologies can be used to understand the organisation and determine the risk profile. • Business Impact Analysis (BIA) BIA evaluates the impact over time of a disruption to an organisation’s ability to operate. • Continuity Requirements Analysis (CRA) CRA estimates the resources, facilities and external services that each activity will require at both resumption and return to “business as usual” after a disruption. • Risk Assessment Risk assessment estimates the likelihood and impact on specific functions based on threats to known vulnerabilities.
Stage 1 Determine Risk Profile
Stage 2 Determine BCM Strategy
Stage 4 Evaluate Continuity Measures
Stage 3 Design and Implement Continuity Measures
BCM Lifecycle BCM Lifecycle is a series of good practices for universities to implement business continuity management. There are four stages in a typical BCM lifecycle.
Stage 1 – Determine Risk Profile To start the BCM Lifecycle, universities’ management shall understand its
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Stage 2 — Determine Business Continuity Management Strategy
Stage 3 – Design and Implement Continuity Measures
After determining the risk profiles (i.e. vulnerability, threat and impact) of universities’ key resources and activities based on BIA, CRA or risk assessment outcome, management shall develop corresponding BCM strategies in response to the assessed risk profile of each key resource or activity. The most commonly applied BCM strategies are listed below:
The third stage of the BCM Lifecycle is to develop and implement a BCM response that realise agreed strategies through the process of developing a set of Business Continuity Plans (BCP). The following steps should be included:
• Risk Acceptance Universities may adopt a “do nothing” BCM strategy if the risk level is low and can be acceptable within universities’ risk appetite. • Risk Transfer In the event of loss, universities may choose a risk transfer strategy that can transfer the economic damage to external insurance providers for financial compensation. However, such strategy does not provide protection against a loss of reputation. • Risk Mitigation Universities may implement a set of internal controls and actions plans to reduce the possibilities or impact of a vulnerability being exploited. • Risk Avoidance When the risk is significant, in terms of either the probability or the impact of threats, the most effective strategy is to bypass / replace the original high risk activities or resources. Upon completion of Stage 1 and Stage 2, management shall also determine the priorities based on assessed risk profiles and BCM strategies.
1. Design Universities should determine the people, processes and technologies that meet the minimum availability of key resources and the maximum time frame within which the key activities must be resumed.
The following major elements should be defined: • Crisis Management Team members and reporting hierarchy; • Staff resources and skills for implementing continuity measures; • Backup operation premises; • Secondary telecommunication architecture; and • Data restoration techniques and equipments for backup operation premises.
2. Implementation During the implementation phase, universities should consolidate all elements determined in the design phase and formulate them in the BCP. A typical BCP can include (but is not limited to) the following essential information for preparation for and recovery from an incident: • Overview of the adopted recovery strategy; • Overview of the BIA / CRA / Risk Assessment results; • Management structure and composition; • Management and staff cascade lists and notification procedures;
• Invocation authorities and procedures; • Detail of recovery teams, members and tasks; • Definition of recovery requirements and timeframes: • Number of staff requiring recovery at each timeframe; • Critical technology (hardware, software); • Detail of offsite recovery locations and storage facilities, and the retrieval procedures; and • Details of critical users and suppliers
Stage 4 – Evaluate Continuity Measures • Before finalising a BCP, adequate tests should be conducted by the university’s management awnd relevant process owners to ensure correctness and applicability of the BCP. Common test approaches include paper test (process owners review BCP), structured walkthrough test (in-depth discussion of BCP procedures) and preparedness test (simulation of an actual incident in specific areas). • After the BCP is finalised and comes into effect, periodic BCP drill and review is a necessary practice within the BCM life cycle as most organisations, including universities, exist in a dynamic environment and are subject to changes in people, processes, environment, risk, geography and strategy. Implementation of such regular BCP maintenance procedures seeks to ensure that the operational continuance capability accurately reflect the current nature, scale and complexity of the universities, and is understood by all universities’ stakeholders and members.
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Top Management
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Middle Management (e.g. Department, Process Owner, etc.)
• Perform risk assessment specific to the IT environment
• Determine how the university should treat the existing risks
• Provide advice to top management for addressing IT related risks
• Provide advice to top management for addressing risks identified in individual departments
• Report their concerns of the acceptability of risks in individual departments
• Assign relevant resource
• Coordinate with individual departments to design and implement BCPs based on risk assessment and BIA results
• Coordinate with IT management to design and implement BCPs based on risk assessment and BIA results
• Understand the continuity measures
• Conduct adequate tests to ensure the correctness and applicability of the IT continuity measures in BCP
• Conduct adequate tests to ensure the correctness and applicability of the operational continuity measures in BCP
• Participate in the BCP tests and provide feedback to management
• Ensure the BCPs address the risk profile of the university
• Initiate periodic BCP drill and review
• Perform risk assessment specific to individual departments
General User
• Understand the risk of the university and the need of Business Continuity Management
• Evaluate the BCP based on the BCP tests Stage 4
IT Management
• Assist individual departments on risk assessment and business impact analysis
• Carry out business impact analysis
• Roles and Responsibilities The roles and responsibilities per each level of management and user are summarised in the table above.
III. General Users The role of general users in Business Continuity Management is often overlooked. However, adequate user participation in BCM Lifecycle is essential to the success of the continuance of BCM capability of the organisation.
Awareness and Training General users engaged on business continuity activities should equip themselves with the appropriate training and knowledge. This will include an awareness of the university’s operational structure and function, understanding the critical resources required for continuous operations, and participating in regular drill exercise.
• Be familiar with relevant BCPs and emergency contact
Departments should ensure that all staff are aware of the expectations held of them should an emergency arise. This could be achieved through exercises, BCP drills, visits to recovery locations, and HR induction and orientation procedures.
Distribution of Business Continuity Plans Copies of relevant business continuity plans should be available to members of the individual departments and staff. Emergency contact information should be distributed to all staff.
tests and exercises of the plans.
Emergency Response and Operations Each individual department should manage the processes of: • Emergency drills; • Emergency warden identification and training; • Evacuation procedures and post review; and • Salvage and restoration All levels of general users shall participate in emergency drills and exercises. Reference and guidelines of details of the above should be made to individual departments.
Conclusion In summary, an effective BCM is a continual process to identify universities’ vulnerabilities, assess risk levels and develop corresponding countermeasures, which requires both the commitment from management and cooperation of general users.
Testing of Business Continuity Plans A testing process shall be established to verify that the plan is up to date and match the needs of the departments. Members of each departmental recovery team must be familiar with the plans through the testing process. General users should participate in the
Reference: http://www.bs25999.com/2009/12/ bs25999-bcms-summary/ http://www.thebcicertificate.org/pdf/ GPG_2010_Edited_Highlights.pdf
Issue 4 • Jul 2011
FEATURE
You’ve Got SMS Maria Chin SMS (Short Messaging Service) is an effective means for asynchronous communication. It has long been used in customer services and peer messaging, either one-to-one (personal) or one-to-many (broadcast). SMS can be one-way as often seen in advertising, or two-way where the recipient can respond. SMS will be incorporated in the CAP (CityU Announcement Portal) starting September 2011. CAP users will then be able to receive CAP SMS on their phones and mobile devices. SMS may include timely and important messages from departments and colleges, and urgent announcements issued by the University, e.g. on special arrangement of class/examination under adverse weather conditions (this is currently only posted on the CityU Homepage when the situation arises). Staff and students are encouraged to opt-in to receive SMS by registering their SMS phone numbers in AIMS (please refer to the steps in the Appendix). They are free to optin anytime before September or afterwards. When the service is released in September, SMS will be sent to those who have already opted-in, or once a staff member/student has registered. Staff and students will be free from spam and unsolicited SMS as the service adheres to the CAP constituent policy whereby senders (e.g. departments) can send SMS only to their respective constituent staff and students.
Staff and students should note that announcement and SMS are separate messaging features in the CAP. Except for University urgent announcement, not every announcement is accompanied by an SMS, and vice versa. It is up to the sender (e.g. department) to decide on which to use (either one or both), which may depend on the importance or urgency of the message. If SMS is used, the sender may also decide to send to Hong Kong numbers only if the message is only of immediate concern to local users. Users, therefore, must not rely on SMS for receiving all CAP messages; they have to regularly check for new messages in the CAP website and their e-mail. Visiting the CityU Homepage for public announcement and news is also advisable. Users of local phone service plans are normally not required to pay for receiving local SMS. However, different service agreements may vary and, to avoid unexpected charges, users are advised to check their service agreements before subscribing their numbers in AIMS, especially the charging when data roaming is active.
SMS may also be used, outside of the CAP, by departments to correspond with users on departmental activities. Hence, staff and students are encouraged to register their SMS numbers so as to enjoy the personal and timely communication with the University and departments.
Appendix: How to register my SMS number in AIMS? Registration only takes 30 seconds. 1. Login AIMS, https://banweb.cityu. edu.hk , with your CityU EID and Password. 2. Under the “Personal Information” tab select “Personal Data for Communication”. 3. Under “Contact Telephone” enter your SMS phone number in the “SMS phone number” field, double check to make sure it is correct. 4. Select “Save” at the bottom of the page. 5. “Exit” AIMS. You are reminded to update your SMS phone number soonest if you have changed number by repeating the steps above; otherwise, you will not be able to receive SMS in your new number.
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FEATURE
Reasons Why You Should Consider Document Management System Adams Chan
Paper documents exist in every organization as they serve as an important medium in the communication and recording of events. It is therefore impossible to eliminate the use of paper while it is still playing a vital role. The only way to minimize the use of paper is by digitizing them into electronic format and by reducing the amount of unnecessary copies in our daily work. However, the saving is usually marginal and may not be worth the effort.
It is common at CityU that stacks of paper are piled up high on the administrators’ desks ; managers’ outbox are full because nobody has the time to file them on time; internal mail carts are loaded with documents being delivered between departments and colleges; and offices are installed with huge filing cabinet taking up a lot of space just to store these documents. While some offices may choose to embrace the document growth, there is indeed a better solution –implementing a document management system.
An overview of Document Management System Development Document Management System (DMS) refers to a computer system that helps organization manage their documents. The earliest DMS appealed in 1980s and since then they have evolved over time with enhanced features and increased capabilities. The simplest DMS project involves just two activities: digitizing paper documents, and storing of electronic documents. Users should immediately appreciate the benefits of its speed of document searching and retrieval. Even with a simple project like this, the success rate is generally not high. Two critical factors are always overlooked. Firstly, documents are just digitized and stored without considering the needs; secondly, frontline users usually find it troublesome to
digitize the documents and to put the electronic document in the right place. They also argued that they have their own existing paper filing system using physical cabinets that they are all familiar with, and therefore there is no need to explore a new way to deal with these documents. DMS providers address these critical factors by looking into the life cycle of how and when the documents are created and used. They realize that by integrating the filing process into business workflow, it will enforce all kinds of documents to be stored in the system. DMSis now packed with workflow engine to help organization convert the psychological filing overheads into a real business need. Imagine an organization would like to keep all job request forms to a department. Instead of educating the administrative colleagues to capture (scan) the documents
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into the DMS after approval, the approval has to be done online upon receipt of the request form via the DMS. With the extended scope, DMS is no longer purely just a DMS. The industry now calls this Enterprise Content Management System (ECM) which facilitates and connects documents capture and imaging, creation, editing, storing and indexing, searching, archiving, distribution, as well as retention. What does it mean to CityU colleagues like us? Do you want a DMS or are you ambitious enough for an ECM?
DMSs at CityU In late 1990s, various departments at CityU started looking at various kinds of DMS solutions in the market. Several DMS providers were identified which ranged from departmental solution to enterprise level solution. College of Business at this time had decided to pilot run a smaller scaled DMS system for the college and its departments to
facilitate paperless meetings and to minimize the use of paper in the office. Throughout the years, various departments at CityU have also acquired and installed their own different DMS products. The adoption rate varies from department to department and the implementation is confined at “Document Management” level which does not involve significant changes to workflow.
If you are interested in the latest development, you are most welcome to contact any of the following project group members: • Miss Rita Fung, Human Resources Office • Ms Scarlett Yeung, Human Resources Office • Mr Francis Lam, Finance Office • Mr. Eric Ng, College of Business • Mr Adams Chan, College of Business
Recently, the Human Resources Office, the Finance Office, and the College of Business have formulated a project group to select a new ECM system. After a rigorous selection process, a system called “EMC Documentum” was chosen in early May 2011. With assistance from various offices, the implementation went quite smoothly and the project group expects the first phase to be completed by the end of June 2011. The first phase of implementation also included an improvement on the business process for “Job Application”.
The University has adopted a number of enterprise level systems which include SCT Banner as our Enterprise Resources Planning system (ERP) to store factual and structured data about students and staff, and also Blackboard Learn as our Learning Management System (LMS) to store all the learning objects. Perhaps it is about time for us to consider an overall enterprise solution, replacing our existing departmental DMS and homegrown web systems, in order to improve our work efficiency and to streamline our business processes as a whole.
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FYI
Staff Retreat of OCIO, CSC and ESU 2011 Noel Laam
One nice summer morning in June 2011, the colleagues of the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), the Computing Services Centre (CSC) and the Enterprise Solutions Office (ESU) eagerly arrived one after another at the Hong Kong Jockey Club at Happy Valley to attend the joint Staff Retreat of the three offices. After the welcoming speech of the Chief Information Officer (CIO), Professor Arthur Ellis, the Provost of the University, who kindly agreed to join and support our Staff Retreat, gave a keynote speech on “Essence of Discover & Innovate@CityU” to brief us on the new direction and mission of the University. Right after it was the presentation on “IT Strategic Plan 2010 -2015” given by the CIO, which outlined the strategies in supporting the University’s “Discover & Innovate @ CityU” initiative and the new “Discovery-Enriched Curriculum.” The time after the morning refreshments break was basically divided into 3 discussion sessions. Colleagues were grouped into 10 teams for brainstorming. In order to
help colleagues break the ice and prepare for the discussion, each session was preceded by some Improv Warm-up games, which proved to work enormously as could be shown from the vigorous participation of the colleagues in the following discussion. Topics of the discussion sessions covered areas like how to promote and market central
IT, ways to take advantage of mobile computing (e.g. iPhone/iPad) at CityU, suggestions of improving healthy work environment and effective interpersonal communication etc., and bright, innovative or even wild and amazing ideas were summarized and presented by teams after exciting brainstorming of their members. These useful inputs were gathered and would be seriously considered by the Management. To stimulate our colleagues after the delicious lunch, a special singing performance called ` Rhapsody of Work Life’ was organized by Mr. Raymond Poon, the Director of Computing Services. He chose a few classic folk songs like ` Scarborough
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GLOSSARY
IT Concepts from Wikipedia Andy Chun (ed.)
HTML5 is the 5th revision of the HTML standard, expected to be a W3C candidate recommendation sometime in 2012. Its core aims are to support the latest multimedia while keeping it easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices. HTML5 is intended to subsume not only HTML4 (cc) the W3C HTML5 logo but also XHTML1. HTML5 adds many new syntactical features to make it easy to include and handle multimedia and graphical content on the web without having to resort to proprietary plugins and APIs. Other new elements are designed to enrich the semantic content of documents. Even the popular Angry Birds game has been ported to HTML5 in May 2011 and is now available for Google Chrome. HTML5 web apps allow applications to work across different brands of mobile devices running different mobile OS’s.
Fair’, `Lover’s Cross’, `Sound of Silence’ etc., which he was able to wittily relate to the challenges of daily work life and led the floor to sing with him to further build up team spirit and comradeship. The meaningful lyrics were a great reminder of the importance of friendship and positive attitude in life and work. Thanks to the organizing committee and all the colleagues who contributed to the event, the Staff Retreat of OCIO, CSC and ESU 2011, enjoyed by all, proved to be a successful and fruitful one as colleagues worked closely together to make it run smoothly, and the valuable comments and suggestions made were heard and will be considered for the further improvements of our work. [Photos courtesy of Peter Mok, (CSC)]
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a version of the Internet Protocol (IP) that is designed to succeed Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). The Internet operates by transferring data in small packets that are independently routed across networks as specified by an international communications protocol known as the Internet Protocol. Each data packet contains two numeric addresses that are the packet’s origin and destination devices. Since 1981, IPv4 has been the publicly used version of the Internet Protocol, and it is currently the foundation for most Internet communications. The growth of the Internet devices have mandated a need for more addresses than are possible with IPv4. IPv6 allows for vastly more addresses. While IPv4 allows 32 bits for an IP address, and can therefore support 232 (4,294,967,296) addresses, IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, so the new address space supports 2128 (approx. 340 undecillion or 3.4×1038) addresses. This article uses material from Wikipedia. The Author(s) and Editor(s) listed with this article may have significantly modified the content derived from Wikipedia with original content or with content drawn from other sources. The current version of the cited Wikipedia article may differ from the version that existed on the date of access. Text in this article available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
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FEATURE
We Are Moving to MS Exchange Maria Chin
Following the pilot test and migration of staff email accounts from Oracle (formerly Sun) Java System Messaging Server (JSMS) to Microsoft Exchange (Exchange hereafter) in 2010, the migration for all University staff email accounts to Exchange started in February 2011. For migrating to Exchange, staff are urged to upgrade their email client software to Microsoft (MS) Outlook 2010 and their MS Office software to MS Office 2010 for optimal efficiency. Staff who have migrated appreciate the support and ease of workplace collaboration with colleagues working on the same software and version. This will become more obvious as more staff/departments have migrated and shared resources, e.g. calendars, scheduling, mailing list, on departmental, college and university levels, are set up. They also find the new software features, in particular, access from mobile devices stimulating. Staff have queried about personalizing the name that is used in Exchange and shown in the “From” field of every piece of email sent. This name (Display Name) is currently the same as the Preferred Name of a staff member’s choice as recorded in the Human Resources database. A function will be made available for staff to personalize the Display Name (the name that one wishes to be known in email and for social purposes) based on the staff
Preferred Name and email alias. The Display Name chosen (one) will be used in Exchange email and other central IT community/social services, e.g. CityUWiki (the wiki and blogs services). As of June 2011, 13 departments, mostly administrative and support, have migrated to Exchange which involved 250GB of email messages from 600 staff and application email accounts. This is 10% of the total number of email accounts and message volume that are needed to be migrated. The migration has not been going as fast as originally planned. Staff availability and readiness have somehow set back the schedule. Inevitably, staff prefer migrating when they are less busy since adapting to new tools requires time and is least desirable when there are deadlines to meet. The summer adds further delays with staff taking leave and are busy before and after. Those who need to change their CityU EIDs to match with their Login IDs to email and related IT services have more to consider. Staff, especially those not using Outlook or on lower versions of Office, may wish to be prepared for the changes by being trained on the software first. Though the migration has no specific demand for additional computing power, in anticipation for the productivity gain some staff are upgrading their aged PCs and acquisition takes time.
With the support from staff and the experience gained in the past months, it is aimed to complete the migration for staff in administrative and support departments by the end of 2011, and then focus on academic department, hoping to complete the migration for all staff by Fall 2012. In parallel with modernizing staff desktops, the server end also needs to keep pace with its upgrade. We intend to upgrade the existing Exchange Server from version 2007 to version 2010 in coming August. This will not affect staff who have already migrated to Exchange as there will be no service downtime or change in usage. Exchange 2010 will support all features in Exchange 2007, and staff may take their time to explore the additional features as they wish after the upgrade. Related reading: Migration of Staff Email Service to Microsoft Exchange, Feb 2011 http://issuu.com/cityuhkocio/docs/ newsletter_issue_2 Migration of Staff Email Service to Microsoft Exchange, Dec 2010 http://wikisites.cityu.edu.hk/sites/ netcomp/articles/Pages/ A Closer Look at the CityU Exchange System Sep 2010 http://wikisites.cityu.edu.hk/sites/ netcomp/articles/Pages/
Issue 4 • Jul 2011
STATISTICS AT A GLACE
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OCIO NEWSLETTER
FYI
IT Strategic Plan 2010-2015 (Update) Andy Chun In the April 2011 issue of the OCIO Newsletter, we highlighted some of the salient points from the University’s new “Information Technology Strategic Plan 2010-2015.” The Plan was the result of contributions by many people, through many rounds of discussion and consultation with all the departments and units as well as students. The final version was submitted to the Senate and was approved on 31 May 2011.
The final version of the IT Strategic Plan can now be accessed from the Web: http://go.cityu.hk/itplan as well as in PDF form: http://goo.gl/moxs3
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Editorial Box OCIO Newsletter Advisory Board Dr. Andy Chun (OCIO) Ms. Annie Ip (OCIO) Mr. Raymond Poon (CSC) Mr. Peter Mok (CSC) Mrs. W K Yu (ESU) Publishing Team Ms. Noel Laam (CSC) Ms. Annie Yu (CSC) Ms. Joyce Lam (CSC) Mr. Ng Kar Leong (CSC) Mrs. Louisa Tang (ESU) Ms. Doris Au (OCIO) For Enquiry Phone 3442 6284 Fax 3442 0366 Email cc@cityu.edu.hk OCIO Newsletter Online http://issuu.com/cityuhkocio
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