Posted on by Elke Martin

Office of the CIO Update – November 2018

Intended audience: IDS staff

I think we can all agree that 2018 has yet again set the standard for how we define the word ‘busy’. As the Information & Digital Services structure settled, the number of new starters and new projects kept us all extremely busy. 2018 was also the first year of operation for the Office of the CIO – which combines the specialist capabilities of security, architecture, governance, business change and identity management – all in support of our CIO and the rest of IDS. In addition, OCIO is leading a number of important projects that contribute to IDS’ success and seek to improve the lives of University stakeholders.

Whilst at times the year has been chaotic, there have been number of improvements that the team has delivered, partnering with you all to bring about these changes. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the team for their efforts, and for everyone in IDS for their support and input into the changes made.

Projects

  • Service One – Delivered an interim enterprise service management capability, commencing a large-scale cultural shift in our professional services areas.
  • Digital Workplace Project – We are piloting a support model and this is being managed as an Agile project, focusing on continuous improvement and collaboration with our customers.
  • Portfolio Management Project – We are aiming to establish consistent tools and processes to allow visibility of capital project health, priority and dependencies to improve project portfolio management across the University.
  • Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCEs) –  Is a form of performance-based testing used to measure students clinical competence, supporting the University’s medical program in Northern Territory. The team have developed a simple custom web application, in partnership with DPO, to enable a smoother examination process. The feedback received was exceptional, as both examiners and students benefited from better information throughout the exam.

Recent Achievements

Aside from working with many of you to support the delivery of projects and operations, the Office of the CIO has delivered:

Improving IDS Processes & Supporting Systems

  • Project Portfolio Kanban – was established with the IDS Management team and input from some IDS staff – to ensure projects are initiated and tracked via a set of defined stages;
  • Customer-Centric Governance – structures were put in place (supporting the CIO) to ensure IDS projects are selected and prioritised by the organisation;
  • Jira Upgrade – the platform underwent a major migration from on-premise to cloud enabling better integration, access and access to new features;
  • Trello Rollout – occurred to support the agile transformation activities across IDS, enabling teams to visually track and control work, something that was noticed by our customers (and helped establish the Digital Workplace Project);
  • Technical Change Control – was re-defined based on feedback from across IDS, to reduce the amount of approvals, improve documentation and consistency;
  • Architecture Practice – establishment of COE/COP occur, alongside draft principles to begin driving better decision making, consolidate our application portfolio and identify projects/improvements alongside our customers;
  • Document Library – establish a single place for all IDS supporting processes and standards that bring consistency to our delivery.

Security Improvements

  • Perimeter Firewalls – were implemented, enabling protection against advanced threats, providing greater visibility and detection of activities on the network;
  • Multifactor – was offered to staff in pilot, identifying a preferred rollout approach and additional options – including use of hardware tokens to better protect users;
  • Incident Playbooks – established a streamlined approach to responding to common cyber security incidents, identifying improvements and potential automation opportunities;
  • Cloud Certification – was re-written to allow us to quickly review and assessment of the risks associated with cloud migration, questionnaires are simpler, and communications materials are clearer.
  • General Data Protection Regulation Compliance (GDPR) – in partnership with Legal and Compliance, the team ran a series of workshops to identify compliance gaps. Consequently, a plan has been developed and changes to privacy policies, statements and the website are forthcoming;
  • Phishing Simulation – we began assessing the likelihood of staff clicking on phishing scam emails. Simulations were conducted and will continue to be a core part of the University’s Cyber Awareness Program, assisting in targeting communications to those areas that are more prone to click on phishing emails.

Communication

  • Communication Templates – were established for common alert and informational email communications sent from IDS;
  • Communications Support – enabled the rest of IDS to send professional and customised communications to the University community and measure impact;
  • IDS Website Refresh – with a working group established the IDS webpage refresh is well underway, pages are beginning to go live and will ensure services are presented in a modern and accessible format.

User Experience & Efficiency

  • AccessNow – now enables over 200 staff to manage their own FAN accounts out in the Portfolios and Colleges representing a significant efficiency improvement;
  • Identity Roles – ensures that students and affiliates have access to the right applications at the right time, reducing requests and minimising confusion;
  • Okta Integrations – we reached a major milestone with the integration of over 200 digital services with Okta, bringing consistency of access and improved security and visibility.
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