From the Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer

Contained herein is the Office of Information Technology’s first annual report. It’s a new idea for us. We hope you find it interesting and useful.

Our goal with this report was to:

• Share relevant factual data,
• Provide insight into who in OIT is “turning the wrenches”, and
• Recognize that our accomplishments are the result of collaborations and partnerships.

In the IT business, change is constant. In 2018, Auburn’s entire community pitched-in to improve the campus technology environment. Some examples include:

• Planning for Hopper II – a significant refreshment of our high performance computing capability,
• Implementing Box, thereby providing a central resource for collaboration,
• Implementing CrashPlan, a tool extension agents use to back-up their machines in the field, and now in use by many others on campus as well,
• Reviewing regulatory research standards in order to comply with NIST 800-171, and
• Implementing ServiceNow to help us manage those things that don’t go so well.

These achievements are possible because we have a great group of IT professionals on this campus; no one unit could accomplish these things alone. There are just over 250 IT pros on campus, split between OIT and distributed teams. Additionally, in any given year, OIT employs more than 50 students working in classrooms, at the service desk, and as software development co-ops.

A special Thank You to the Student Government Association. SGA is a great partner for OIT. From spreading the word on Cybersecurity to helping with search committees, I am continually impressed with their expertise and maturity.

As CIO, I appreciate each and every one of these teams and individuals for their professionalism and dedication to the Auburn mission. A key focus for our University is to work toward Auburn Excellence, and, as you read our 2018 Year in Review, we hope you see how true this is of our campus IT community. Please take a few moments to review areas that interest you! We value any feedback that would help us improve Vol. #2 in 2019. Just submit your comments through Ask the CIO.

- Jim O'Connor