UEN Projects and Initiatives For FY2014

UEN and the University of Utah collaborated to install fiber optic cable and optical Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) equipment to critical sites throughout the Salt Lake City Metropolitan area. This fiber ring connects two sites on the University of Utah campus, the new Downtown Data Center and the Level3 Data center. UEN is currently working to complete an operational Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Utah. Once the MOU is completed the next task will be to propose an annual operating budget.

UEN was awarded a grant by the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in the first round of the Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program (BTOP) as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). You can learn more about the grant and UEN's progress at www.uen.org/btop.

These are sites that were awarded last year in the RFP process and are now being installed. Included in this list are Head Start, Libraries, Charter Schools and other public education sites. Over 300 sites were awarded in the last RFP and, although most of these are circuits already in place, some are new and most involve the installation of new equipment. UEN is in process of working to finish Ethernet WAN Services to the five of the remaining elementary schools in Utah that do not have broadband service.

UEN and the University of Utah plan to move equipment to the new downtown data center in Salt Lake City.

The Telecommunication industry is changing. All carriers are now using Session Internet Protocol (SIP) services in their internal networks. This allows providers to use the native capabilities of Ethernet to provide telephone trunks and services. UEN and its stakeholders continue, at present, to receive telecom services via legacy copper connections. UEN has been asked to explore the SIP environment and determine current and future options for landing telecommunication trunks and services. A Request for Information (RFI) has been developed, potential providers have been identified and a two day event is being planned to meet with vendors and discuss SIP options.

In 2008 the Utah Legislature passed a law requiring textbook companies to hire an independent reviewer to show how their materials align to the Utah core. In 2010 this mandate was temporarily suspended. Since that time UEN developed a new core database which broke a lot of the functionality of the online interfaces. To meet the mandate of the law, the code is being rewritten and relaunched.

Update web hosting to Virtual Machines and more automation for the web and software developers.

Evaluate VMware's vCloud Director and pilot its use with Higher Education Institutions.

Certain software applications can be obtained at a reduced cost through consortium licensing. UEN is identify those licenses and working with higher Ed and public Ed constituents to execute consortium licenses.

It is time to rewrite UEN's popular Lesson Plan Tool since it was over 10 years ago when it was last updated. The new tool will also include a Unit Plan feature and a full administrative interface. The application will be rewritten to utilize UEN’s new web-service framework.

Develop and host the Utah state wide longitudinal data system for education. Data from pre school through higher education and work force is link and made available to data contributing agencies to compile research and reports on the entire student life cycle.

Because UEN is part of the Internet 2 network, we are exploring new applications obtained through the I2 partners. These include new video conferencing tools, integrations with Canvas, another applications that may be obtained at reduced prices through national partners.

UEN has been providing IVC support to state agencies for the past two years. The needs of state agencies have grown and it is now time to clarify the UEN role and determine how UEN resources should be used. UEN has provided draft plan, presented that plan to interim Executive Director Eric Denna. Dr. Denna has discussed this draft proposal with State DTS directors. We are awaiting further instructions as to how to proceed.

IVC firewall traversal is always a challenge. UEN engineers have worked for the past two years to develop an effective method to bypass firewalls without compromising the network and our stakeholders. We have rolled out this solution throughout the public education environment. Currently UEN staff is working with USU to adapt the VRF solution, implement throughout USU sites and develop a plan to engage all of the USHE community. The VRF solution involves placing IVC devices into UEN IP address space and making configuration changes at the Layer 3 switching devices.

At the request of USBE and the Commission on Civic and Character Education, UEN will help to develop an online course or series of course for teacher professional development.

UEN is migrating infrastructure to the DDC in order to be able to support services out of the DDC. Funding to move was supplied in FY2013 to do so.

Move to using ServiceNow For UEN’s IT asset management system. Currently UEN uses a Filemaker Pro Database for this purpose, there is a need to make asset management a UEN wide process and under the direction of UEN leadership we will be converting to use ServiceNow for this purpose.

UEN DNS AnyCast servers are 6 years old now and in need of updating. UEN will be replacing these host with DNS appliances at the four main nodes and retiring all of the old servers.

This project was formally to move to Oracle and PostgreSQL but with changes to our environment Oracle no longer is prominent. We have many application that use MS SQL as a requirement and PostgreSQL is our open source choice. Sybase and MySQL(where possible) will be eliminated. All new application will be required to be either MS SQL or PostgreSQL

UEN has nearly converted all services to virtualized servers there are some that still remain and others that will be converted when third party vendor support virtualization. UEN had virtualized many server to Solaris Zone Technology and is now converting to Ubuntu and VMs.

UEN’s web site content need to be more easily updated. System groups is working with Web Content Group and Software Groups to streamline the processes of development, testing, and deploying content and software applications to production.

Much effort continues to be required to maintain and operate the systems that support UEN’s applications and services.

On August 12, 2013, a redesigned UEN site was rolled out. This required changes to 12 applications under SWG's control. In addition to the new look and feel, we must implement mobile-friendly fluid layouts.

UEN has an opportunity to change how we handle access and authorization for our services, making it easier for us to provide services to educators without creating another identity to maintain. SWG has committed to bringing up the MyUEN portal as a SAML service provider as well as building in SAML SP functionality into all new products, e.g., the new Contact tool, new Rubric tool, and Lesson/Unit Plan Admin.

The Contact application is a tool used by NOC, TSSC, and Security for recording information about school, school district, state, and vendor contacts. The new version adds distinct Organizations, Sites, and Networks. The data set from Contact is also used as the basis for the UEN WHOIS application. The new RESTful web service will support WHOIS and potentially other applications, including IVCContacts.

SWG has been moving to a web-service framework for exposing Lesson Plan, Core Link, Core, and other data to our internal applications. Many external stakeholders have asked us to make our web services outward facing. We are in the process of creating a secure and robust web service framework for both internal and external use, utilizing caching and indexed search capabilities for high performance data retrieval.

Our version of the Liferay portal is currently 5.1 SP5. We intend to upgrade to Liferay 6.1 EE GA3 within the next year. This will provide a host of new features, increase performance, and be more secure.

SWG has agreed to move our databases off Sybase ASE and onto PostgresSQL. We have agreed to finish this by the end of September 2014.

Plans are underway to complete the rewrites and updates of SWG’s remaining Perl/CGI applications. Eliminating three more is expected within this fiscal year.

SWG is actively involved in helping UA move all Java-based applications to the new Ubuntu VM environment. In the process we are updating Java and the application servers, and are migrating to PostgresSQL. This new environment is more stable and secure than the old environment.

SWG continues to modernize and commoditize its software development process. We have adopted JIRA as our primary project management tool. We are in the process of automating our build management using Maven and SVN. We hope to eliminate CVS and other build methodologies by the end of this fiscal year.

SWG is responsible for between 35 and 40 different applications, and we continue to develop new products. We will continue to provide maintenance and functional enhancements to applications we provide for our other stakeholders, including KUED, KUER, USBE, K-12, higher education, and others.

In 2009 Utah was designated a National Science Foundation EPSCoR Jurisdiction. The Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) status enables Utah to compete for federal research funding opportunities not available to non-EPSCoR states. UEN is providing the Utah EPSCoR, CI-WATER and iUtah EPSCoR infrastructure, web site and outreach support.

UEN is providing instructional design support to USBE specialists as they create more online experiences for professional learning. This allows teachers and specialist to experience Canvas, and also obtain easy access to subject-specific UEN tools and resources.

NetSafe Utah helps K12 schools remain compliant with the Children's Internet Protection Act requirement of providing Internet safety and cyber-bully prevention instruction. NetSafe Utah is funded by the Utah legislature through a Sexual Exploitation of Children Prevention grant administered through the Utah department of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Services. NetSafe is free for schools, parents, and caregivers.

Attend summit in February in Orlando; Host follow up meeting in SLC in May; Offer additional sections of 4 classes both through UEN and in other districts in the state

UEN desires to have a comprehensive database that will track all equipment. The major components needing to be tracked are: 1. Date of purchase, 2. Purchase price, 3. Useful life and 4. Expected replacement date. Assembling this information in one place will allow UEN to more effectively plan for equipment upgrades, timing, cost and need. UEN is working with the University of Utah to leverage existing resources and expedite this project.

UEN strategic planning revolves around five key questions. We will continue to work through the planning questions with staff, board members, advisory council representatives, and other constituent groups. Once the Board has approved the general direction on questions 1-3, the UEN leadership team will handle day-to-day operations with questions 4 and 5.