ASET 2006-07 Annual Report
Report Navigation
ET initiatives and projects continue to become more focused and streamlined, and have their respective "production homes" in other areas of ASET as well as ITS. A primary focus of ET's mission is to investigate new information technologies to determine how and if further investigation and/or prototyping is warranted. The projects noted below reflect ET's priority efforts during 2006-07.
The Identity and Access Management (IAM) initiative formed to address the need for a cohesive and comprehensive identity and access management strategy for Penn State. This group is comprised of thirty individuals who span many administrative areas at the University. These individuals have an understanding of digital identities, knowledge of business processes in their respective areas, and an eagerness to collaborate in finding a solution that will provide a strategic direction for Penn State and IT.
The IAM group's primary goal is to create an identity and access management Roadmap for Penn State by establishing a community of people and organizations from across the University; this group is composed of individuals who understand each other's pressures, needs, and desires in maintaining and in developing an identity and access management infrastructures to facilitate academic, business, and collaborative processes. The recommendations and Roadmap will be delivered to the Vice Provost for Information Technology in February 2008.
ET provided an initial prototype using the Media Wiki server code. This was well received, but did not meet all the needs of our customers. Specifically, user-managed access controls were not available. Therefore, ET provided a second prototype using the Confluence Wiki. This wiki prototype features user-managed access control and supports groups managed via the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP); LDAP provides the infrastructure for Penn State Directory Services. The Confluence test wiki is available to faculty and staff at https://confluence.et-test.psu.edu. More information about ET's investigation of wikis is available via the "Initiatives" section of the ET Web site.
A Security Best Practices document was written to create a set of uniform minimum security requirements for the systems, networks, and applications within ASET. Representation included a cross-section of ASET staff and included staff members from AIT, ET, and GEaRS.
As ITS deploys lab and classroom environments in which students and faculty can create large, rich media files (e.g. video, audio blogging, animations, and simulations), methods for managing those files for customers are needed. ET staff are investigating and prototyping solutions for this challenge, while working in collaboration with the ITS Classroom and Lab Computing (CLC) Group. ET's initial prototype is targeted to support Studio 204, which is located in the Undergraduate Library, Pollock Computer Lab. More information is available via ET's Storage Solutions, Studio 204 initiative page.
The purpose of the IntraSource project is to design a Web-based repository for code developed at Penn State. Although its use will not be mandatory, it will be available for anyone at the University who has a Penn State Access Account. The goal is to develop a repository that includes, but is not limited to, the following features: code versioning, bug tracker, source and executable capability, mailing lists for users and developers, code cross referencing, and developer documentation. Currently, the Web-based repository known as SourceForge is being used as a starting point for this project.
