Why is this important?
Research is the lifeblood of innovation at any university and UC Santa Barbara boasts some of the most vital research opportunities and output of any institution worldwide. UCSB is one of only 69 research-intensive institutions in the U.S. and Canada elected to membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities, cementing its status as a higher-education leader and beacon of research-based instruction, extension, and partnership.. The Research Experience focus area of the IT Strategy seeks to couple with the forward movement of the research community to bring greater coherence in technology support and function. Key initiatives for the research domain going forward include creating a research IT and data service catalog, establishing a working group and faculty advisory group to create a research-specific IT strategic plan, expanding on-premise virtual machine infrastructure and services for researchers that could be extended to other UC campuses and beyond, and creating a graduate research consulting community with division-specific faulty technology ambassadors.
Goal: Provide expanded, discoverable, and readily available IT capabilities and services to meet the shared and discipline-specific needs of the researcher community.
Objectives & Outcomes
- A research and IT leadership structure to assess, advocate, and plan for required research IT capabilities.
- Research IT groups plan, promote and deliver services with greater coordination and collaboration.
- Compliance with federal cybersecurity regulations and standards (e.g., NIST 800-171) across all research-specific IT devices.
- Increased capacity of compliant compute and storage available to researchers and students.
- High levels of satisfaction with processes to identify, request, and obtain research IT support.
- Maximize time available of research IT groups to provide specialized services.
- Develop and retain additional IT staff to support the specialized technology needs of researchers.
Key Strategies
- Create an administrative leadership role in the VC Research Office to advocate for the technology needs of the research community and integrate research IT planning and services university-wide.
- Appoint a working group to identify pressing gaps in research IT capabilities and design on-going structures and processes to govern research IT services.
- Coordinate delivery of IT services among specialized and shared research IT support groups (E.g., research concierge, shared service catalog, etc).
- Expand capacity to meet growing needs for on-prem and cloud compute and storage, security compliance, and proposal development.
- Make research IT software and services easily discoverable through onboarding, education and training, and through service and support guides.
- Expand research data management services, workflows, and storage capabilities to meet researcher needs and facilitate compliance.
Fiscal Year 2024-2025 Initiatives
- Name and establish funding for research IT leadership
- Establish a Working Group and Faculty Advisory Group to create a Research IT strategic plan
- Create research IT and data service catalog (rcd.ucsb.edu)
- Implement a backup solution for all campus researchers *
- Pilot an on-premise research computing package (virtual machine & storage infrastructure) providing fast data storage, computing, and archival capabilities for researchers
- Expand availability and use of secure research data and compute environments that comply with federal cybersecurity regulations and standards (e.g., NIST 800-171) *
- Catalog university research data based on IS-3 protection and availability levels
- Standardize protocols for identifying and protecting research data based on IS-3 protection and availability levels
- Implement a clean laptop program for international travel
- Pursue UC system collaborative research compute and storage efforts
- Expand on-premise virtual machine infrastructure to other small UC campuses
- Create a graduate research consulting community and division-specific faculty technology ambassadors
- Assess research use of virtual computing platforms
Roadmap - Priority Themes By Year
|
Priority Theme |
FY 2024-25 |
FY 2025-26 |
FY 2026-27 |
FY 2027-28 |
|
Create a research and IT leadership structure to assess, advocate, and plan for required research IT capabilities |
- Name research IT leaders & establish funding - Create a Research IT Strategic Plan |
- Initiate strategic plan for research technology |
- Execute strategic plan for research technology |
- Execute strategic plan for research technology |
|
Expand Research IT capacity for compute and storage, and data management |
- On-premise VM infrastructure pilot - Join UC system compute and storage efforts - Expand on-premise VM infrastructure to other UCs - Research backup solution - Assess use of virtual computing |
- Transition commodity IT to ITS |
- Expand education and training - Expand compute and storage |
|
|
Make research IT software and services coordinated and easily discoverable. |
- Expand rcd.ucsb.edu - Research consulting community |
- Expand research data services - Improve coordination among research IT support groups |
- Shared issue tracking and service request tools. |
|
|
Facilitate security and federal compliance |
- Catalog research data protection and availability levels - Federal cybersecurity compliance - Standardize protection based on data protection and availability levels - Clean laptop program |