Mid-Project Review
On October 19th, 2006, the E-Communication Implementation Team recommended to ITS senior management and to the Campus Information Technology Leaders (CITL) to “pause” and review the decisions and directions of the implementation project.
The results of the review are complete and the report can be found at the Executive Summary page. The full report is also available.
Q & A
As we have shared information about the implementation project and proposed review with faculty, staff and IT leaders across campus, many questions have been raised surrounding the reassessment. To encourage an open dialogue about the project review, we share the questions and answers below
Why is the reassessment necessary?
Who will conduct the reassessment?
What kinds of environmental changes have occurred?
Why is the Eudora announcement important?
What is Google@edu?
What is the timeline for the review?
What is the current status of the Blue Cluster?
Why are you re-evaluating the recommendations of the 2005 E-Communcation Project?
Didn’t the 2005 assessment clearly show that people like the Blue email system?
Why not simply upgrade the current Blue email system?
Why did it take so long to implement the new Cyrus system?
Has ITS already made a decision about which email system to use?
What are the options?
What were the themes and corresponding recommendations from the 2005 E-Communication Project?
Q - Why is the reassessment necessary?
We routinely review projects at important milestones. These reviews sometimes identify changes in the environment or in the project that require a more thorough evaluation. This is especially important for projects with a long duration, as the technology environment can change rapidly. In the review of this project, the environmental and project changes are, we believe, sufficient to warrant a re-examination of project directions and decisions. We are on the verge implementing a new Blue email service that will require hundreds of hours of ITS staff time and considerable investment in hardware. As stewards of the University’s IT resources, we feel a review is prudent and necessary prior to this major commitment of the time and resources.
Q - Who will conduct the reassessment?
ITS staff are preparing a self-study of the project activity to date. We will share the self-study with a multi-departmental team consisting of faculty and staff and ask for their recommendations on how to proceed. We will share both the self-study and the recommendations of the review committee broadly across campus.
Q - What kinds of environmental changes have occurred?
- Throughout the implementation project, faculty and staff have questioned why ITS is supporting two email systems (Exchange and Blue), especially in light of the costs of maintaining two systems.
- In Spring 2006, the Auditor’s Office released a report suggesting that the UI take a proactive stance in identifying and eliminating parallel systems wherever possible.
- One project recommendation was to support any unit who chose to move their users to the ITS Exchange email service. More campus units have elected to move users to Exchange than was anticipated. Thus, the number of faculty and staff users remaining on the Blue email service has significantly reduced.
- In October 2006, Qualcomm announced that Eudora (the primary email client used to access the Blue Email Cluster) would move to open source. This changed has raised questions about the long-term viability of Eudora as an email client.
- In October 2006, Google announced it was entering the no-cost student email market. Subsequently, Arizona State University announced that they had moved 65,000 student email accounts to Google.edu. Microsoft and Yahoo both continue to develop their products and hundreds of schools have started using these services. These products are significantly more mature and realistic alternatives in some situations.
Q - Why is the Eudora announcement important?
One of the primary wishes of users surveyed in the 2005 E-Communication assessment was to continue to allow choice in the client, specifically Eudora. Support from ITS and ease of use were commonly mentioned reasons for choosing Eudora. With the move to open source, ITS will no longer receive the Qualcomm corporate support it has relied on in the past and as Eudora moves to the Mozilla architecture, there is no guarantee that it will be anything like the current Eudora client.
Google@edu is a free email system that is essentially outsourced by a college or university to Google. It includes 2 gigabytes of mail storage, integrated instant messaging, an electronic calendar, and numerous other features. Arizona State is the first major university to use the service, although several smaller colleges have already migrated their student email to this service.
Q - What is the timeline for the review?
By December 15th a report will be written outlining the situation without recommendations. Between Dec 15 and Jan 15th the report will be presented to collegiate partners, CITL members and any other interested individuals for comment. The review will consider all of the input from the community and then make a recommendation by Jan 31.
Q - What is the current status of the Blue Cluster?
The Blue system will be effectively past the ability to serve users by August 2007. A new email solution must be identified by Feb 1st and implemented for incoming Fall 2007 students by May 2007.
Q - Why are you re-evaluating the recommendations of the 2005 E-Communcation Project?
We certainly do not intend our review as a second guessing exercise. The initial review team was thorough, used sound methodologies, and engaged many faculty, students and staff. All of the recommendations were thoughtfully considered and their efforts were, and still are, greatly appreciated. The project made 14 recommendations; 13 of the recommendations are in the process of implementation. The re-evaluation is meant to assess progress on those recommendations. The one recommendation that has not been started is the one that has turned out to require the most effort.
Q – Didn’t the 2005 assessment clearly show that people like the Blue email system?
Most respondents indicated that they liked the choice of clients (usually Eudora). While some advanced users prefer the open source architecture of Blue, most, but not all, people are more interested in their choice of client. Generally, most users are satisfied with any email system that is fast and responsive from any location, and they can choose their client. This choice of client is not under review and will remain a part of any decision going forward.
Q – Why not simply upgrade the current Blue email system?
During implementation of the project, we discovered that it is not technically feasible to significantly increase quotas (one of the critical recommendations from the project) using Blue’s existing architecture. Thus, we were required to design a new architecture and select associated technology (called “Cyrus”). Once Cyrus is implemented, there would no longer be a “Blue” email system as we know it today.
Q - Why did it take so long to implement the new Cyrus system?
Implementing a new architecture is complex and involves a variety of elements, including provisioning, authentication, mail routing and backup policies. The Cyrus architecture was somewhat unknown and it was clear that the implementation would take time. Below is a timeline of Cyrus decision and implementation:
| 12/2005 | E-Communication Project Final Report published |
| 2/13/2006 | First Implementation Project team meeting held |
| 3/1/2006 | ITS identified the Cyrus architecture as the best to replace the Blue Cluster |
| 5/2/2006 | Test version available of Webmail is available. |
| 5/8/2006 | High-level Cyrus timeline available with project completion target of 1/25/2007 |
| 8/8/2006 | New interface in support of the new system was implemented |
| 10/2006 | Qualcomm announcement to open source Eudora |
| 10/2006 | Arizona State moved 65,000 accounts Google |
| 1/19/2006 | Decision made to re-assess Cyrus decision |
Q – Has ITS already made a decision about which email system to use?
No decision has been made. A decision will be made after the report is written, reviewed by the campus, and input gathered.
There are several options. Each can be used independently or a mix could be recommended:
Continue implementing Cyrus
Move users to the existing Exchange system
Investigate outsourcing
Q – What were the themes and corresponding recommendations from the 2005 E-Communication Project?
Themes are in italics with recommendations below:
- Email has become the most important means of electronic communications, even more important than the desk phone.
- Investing in the existing email services directly addresses this theme. (#1)
- Providing more education improves the effectiveness of electronic communications. (#14)
- People want to easily send, receive, share, and save large files and need robust tools for managing those files.
- Raising the student disk quotas from 5 MB to 50 MB and raising faculty & staff disk quotas to 250 MB will bring Central IT systems into parity with educational peers’ mail quotas. (#4)
- Improving the quota processing on the Blue Cluster would help users better manage their email. (#5)
- Aligning message size (#10) and supporting ways of moving large files (#11) respond to this theme.
- Members of the campus community want less spam.
- Reducing the amount of spam directly addresses this issue. (#6)
- Providing training and education on how to create spam filters using the most popular email clients will help eliminate some of the direct spam received. (#14)
- Providing education on how to publish email addresses on web pages will minimize the harvesting of the addresses by spammers. (#14)
- Portals, blogs, and RSS feeds could be used to post University information rather than emailing the unsolicited University information. In the fall 2005 survey students rated a portal highest on the desirable list as a way of receiving all sorts of University information and schedules. (#13)
- Some people want additional security, and some indicate problems with existing security practices.
- The current practice of blocking viruses at the email gateway has been effective and should continue to be effective. More education about how viruses are transmitted and how to keep up-to-date with current virus information is needed. (#14)
- Survey results and focus groups show high interest in using digital signatures and encrypting and decrypting email. ITS should study how to allow valid encrypted email attachments. (#12)
- The campus community has strong and varied opinions about calendaring. Some view group calendaring as critical, some see little need for it, and some are opposed to it.
- Allowing entire units to move to Exchange will serve those who want group calendaring. The surveys showed that students would like to schedule meetings with faculty and staff, but the faculty/staff surveys show equally strong sentiment in not wanting such student access. (#1, #3)
- Many students would like to have course schedules on-line, something that may be possible using the existing course management system. (#13)
- People want fast and responsive access to their email system from wherever they read mail.
- Enhancing the Blue Cluster and Exchange addresses this theme. (#1, #2)
- Implementing infrastructure that allows faculty, staff, and students to easily send email using their desktop email client (Eudora, Netscape, Outlook, etc.) will enhance off campus access using a known or preferred email client. (#8)
- The standard University email address (firstname-lastname@uiowa.edu) is important. Most people agree that off-campus routing is necessary.
- This theme has been addressed via recommendation #7, policy recommendations, and education.
- Many members of the campus community prefer freedom of choice in selecting their personal computers and the applications that run on them.
- Retaining our existing two email services maintains their current ability to choose. (#1)
- Some welcome advanced electronic communications, but others are less tolerant or desiring of it.
- As in theme 8 above, the decision to retain and enhance existing services allows people to use or not use the electronic communications available. (#1)
- There is a need for education about the proper and effective use of electronic communications.
- This theme is directly addressed by recommendation #14: Provide more education about the proper and effective use of electronic communications.
- Publicizing desktop client availability both on and off campus addresses the need for education. (#9)