- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
At UC ANR's July Town Hall, Jaki Hsieh Wojan, UC ANR's chief information security officer, explained ANR's recent website and portal issues and the steps being taken to solve them. Below are questions that were asked during the town hall.
Why are we keeping physical servers in Davis? Have you considered transferring from local modems to cloud-based methods?
We are working on a long-term project to move some of ANR's data to the cloud: Integrated Web Platform. IWP will be deployed on Google Cloud. Because we have nearly 1,300 websites, it's taking time to implement a common platform to fit everyone's needs. It is not as simple as picking up our webpage sand moving them to a cloud host, that would just move the existing problems into a new location. The IWP project is rearchitecting the entire web content management system. You can see the progress at https://iwp.ucanr.edu.
Will ANR publications be preserved?
Yes
Before archiving are you asking permission from the owners of data? Is the data available after archiving if needed?
Active sites won't be removed in our first pass. Before data is archived, owners will be contacted or leaders of the units, if the owner isn't available. Archived data will be kept and can be restored, if needed.
We can't change owners of websites so some of our sites belong to people who are no longer with ANR. How will IT handle this?
IT can change website owners. You can submit a ticket for that request at help@ucanr.edu
What are our options for taking credit card payments online?
Aventri is an option for taking credit card payments. IT is looking into additional options.
We use some of those websites that are not updated often as a resource of information for the community after an academic leaves. It will be unfortunate to lose that resource.
Archived data will be preserved and can be made available. You will be able to contact help@ucanr.edu if you need access to archived data.
How can I help reduce the volume of data on the servers?
Please maintain your SiteBuilder sites. Remove images that are no longer being used on particular pages, deactivate or delete outdated info, etc. Send a message to iwp@ucanr.edu if you need assistance.
Why are we purchasing new onsite equipment if the goal is to move to the cloud?
Moving to cloud is a multiyear, complex project and it encompasses far more than the website and portal. A “lift and shift” of our current environment to the cloud would just move our current problems to a different location. We need to modernize on a local level before we can fully migrate everything.
Can we have an all IT Town Hall?
Yes.
I am worried about refresh rates when the Content Delivery Network (CDN) is in place.
The refresh rates can be granularly configured to treat each type of content with different refresh rates. We will be working on optimizing these rates once we start using the CDN. We will communicate how best to request a different refresh rate when we get closer to implementation.
A recording of Jaki Hsieh-Wojan's presentation can be viewed at https://youtu.be/wAQGGimS3Rg.
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
This year's Electronic Records Day event “The Great Digital Transformation – What's in it for You?” – is a Zoom forum hosted by the UC Records Management Committee.
The hour-long webinar will take place Nov. 1 at 10:01 a.m. Speakers will include experts in UC archives, records management and privacy. The experts will focus on their areas of expertise regarding collaboration tools. Each area will provide a 15-minute presentation. After the presentations, there will be a Q & A.
Register at https://ucsb.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XWnemeUGTkmYn9aZLQb0Ow.
Information about the speakers and their talks:
Christina Velazquez Fidler is the digital archivist at the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library. She manages the maintenance and stewardship of born digital archival collections. She received her B.A. in English at Humboldt State University in 2005, her MLIS from San Jose State University in 2010 and has been working in the archives profession for over 10 years. She has previous work experience as a software implementation consultant, archives assistant at the California Academy of Sciences, and as the archivist at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley.
Acquiring born digital collections in a remote environment requires new approaches and system dependencies. In this presentation, Fidler will discuss steps taken by the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley to acquire born digital collections remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown. Many of these approaches are now regular practice in the current hybrid environment. In the context of selected collections, Fidler will discuss the Digital Archivist's Resource Tool (DART) and other tools being used to secure remote acquisitions.
Eric Kalmin is the director of Records Management and Information Practices at UC Merced. In his current role, he is responsible for the operational oversight and development of the records management, information practices, and campus privacy programs.
Prior to joining UC Merced, Kalmin worked for California State Parks focusing on records management, archives, and digital transformation initiatives. Kalmin holds a master's degree in archives and records administration from San Jose State University.
Jordan Thaw is a Central Valley native and proud UC Merced alumna, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences in May 2015. She began working at UC Merced in 2012 as a student assistant in the Physical Planning, Design and Construction department where she helped build their analog and digital archives.
In Thaw's current role as a records analyst in the Office of Legal Affairs, her major responsibilities include consulting with users about records management best practices and responding to CPRA and FERPA requests.
Presenters Kalmin and Thaw explore trends related to the adoption of digital collaboration tools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic – highlighting records management challenges and how campuses can raise awareness of the records they create, store and protect while collaborating virtually.
Kent Wada is chief privacy officer and director of policy and privacy for the University of California, Los Angeles.
Designated as the campus's first chief privacy officer, Wada addresses foundational privacy and data issues that have broad impact on the campus community, the academy, and the University mission. His office collaborates closely with other campus offices, including those with compliance authority for the protection of personal information and counterparts in the health sciences, to make UCLA a good steward of data. In his role as director of policy and privacy in the Office of Advanced Research Computing, Wada works broadly with the campus and its data and IT governance functions to help shape the institutional agenda for technology policy issues of strategic concern. He will give a brief presentation on digital collaboration tools and their impacts on privacy.
- Author: Jaki Hsieh Wojan, Chief Information Security Officer
To ensure information technology system security and stability, the UC ANR IT team will be performing scheduled maintenance routinely every third Sunday of the month.
Planned maintenance activities will occur in an eight-hour window from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
During the maintenance window, all systems will be down and unavailable, with the exception of email and Zoom meetings. We will do our best to quickly restore services. When systems are restored and available for your use, we will send an email.
Two reminder emails will be sent to you in advance of the scheduled maintenance:
- Monday, seven days prior to the scheduled maintenance
- Friday, two days prior to the scheduled maintenance
Thank you in advance for your patience and support. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to get in touch with IT at anritg@ucanr.edu.
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
On Monday, Dec. 27, 2021, all the ANR servers will be taken offline for planned annual ANR IT server maintenance during the upcoming curtailment.
There will be no access to the ANR portal, websites, file servers and applications, etc. between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m.
If you plan to work on something that requires information from the ANR servers, please access the necessary data before Dec. 27 to work offline. If you are scheduling social media posts for Dec. 27 during this time period, please don't link to ANR websites.
ANR email will be unaffected by the server maintenance.
ANR IT plans to carry out these critical projects during the curtailment period to have a minimal impact on our colleagues.
