by Kristina Torres

Among the critical programs underway in the Office of the CIO are the Identity and Access Management and Unified Communications System programs. These programs represent foundational building blocks toward "One University" and are icons of the organization’s change toward a performance culture. Due to the nature of these programs, the Office of the CIO’s senior leadership team is focusing attention and resources to ensure unequivocal success.

Key points of this include:

• Filling the Program Director roles with strong, recognized change leaders
• Providing each Program Director with a consulting partner "shadow" to ensure that the program initiation optimizes chances of success
• Having the Program Directors report directly to the CIO
• Forming the Steering Committee out of a subset of the CIO Advisory Executive Committee

Identity and Access Management
Identity and Access Management (IdM) is the combination of business processes, technology and policies used to manage information about a person throughout the lifecycle of his or her affiliation with the university.

IdM Program Vision
Students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other members of the extended university family must have an intuitive way to find and utilize pertinent information and resources in a streamlined environment that protects confidentiality and intellectual property, promotes security of assets, and encourages multi-institutional collaboration.

The program is composed of several projects, the first being the foundation of Identity and Access Management and is in the planning stages. Diane Owens is program director for the identity management program, Greg Niemeyer is the technical lead, Keith Kidner is the project manager, and Chad Wulf is the management consultant.

Unified Communications
Currently, the OSU faculty and staff receive e-mails, voicemails, text messages, and faxes; use a multiple number of major business processes to perform their tasks; and, access these various forms of communications from different devices (like laptops or PC’s, to standard telephones, cell phones, PDA’s and fax machines). By leveraging currently available technology of centrally managed enterprise solutions such as e-mail, voicemail, active directory, wired and wireless networks, and the campus telephone system, a unified communications solution for the university can be implemented.

Unified Communications Program Vision
The Unified Communications solution will simplify and integrate the major forms of communications systems and processes; and enable them to work together in real time to streamline information delivery and ease of use for each customer.

This program is composed of several projects and is in the planning stages. Jamie Lambert is program director, Tracey Richardson is the unified messaging and communications system project manager, and Jeff McCullough is the management consultant.