ITS completed a 15-month long infrastructure upgrade during the fall term; all portions of the support systems for NAU administrative computing applications were upgraded. This work upgraded web servers, application servers, database servers, database engine, report servers, and development toolset. The “go live” for the new architecture was successful and significantly eased the slowdown LOUIE users had experienced recently when registration and payroll processing ran in parallel. This work shifted administrative computing applications to lower cost Linux servers for PeopleSoft and Oracle databases, an ongoing process that concludes with the Advantage financial system upgrade described below.
Coming up—There are significant changes coming that will allow students to control access to their personal information. Also, LOUIE and the data warehouse are affected by changes to federal regulations tightening who can see what, why and when they can see it, and how it will be available. Read on.
LOUIE
In response to an increasing number of requests from students, parents, and guardians, NAU has begun a project that will allow students to control sharing some of their personal financial and academic information with those helping finance their education.
When this work is completed, students will be able to immediately grant or revoke access to a limited set of their information. This will give NAU students a way to bring parents and guardians “into the loop” regarding essential financial aid budget planning information, so that they can view account charges and make payments directly online on behalf of their students. It will give students the authority and ability to allow specific individuals to monitor academic successes and challenges, circumventing the unfortunate, but somewhat frequent, communication lapses between parents and students.
Data Warehousing Upgrades
On December 9th, 2008, the U.S. Department of Education published final regulations changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in the Federal Register. In response to this update, Information Resource Management (IRM) has revised policy to restrict access to some data and institutional reports. New security forms for requesting access to institutional data for student workers and to develop institutional reports using NAU’s data warehouse and BusinessObjects are now available. Please contact IRM at IRM@NAU.EDU to obtain these forms.
IRM is expecting further security measures to be implemented this spring and summer as NAU interprets the new FERPA regulations’ impacts. This may require IRM to recertify security access for all employees with access to BusinessObjects. More information will be distributed through the IRM Steering Committee.
The Bursar Student Financials Office is spearheading the project and the first phase will focus on the students’ account management. Financial Aid and Student Records efforts will follow.
Campus Information Team
NAU limits access to critical student and employee data stored in administrative information systems. Access to this data is granted only after an employee completes training for FERPA after receiving guidance from supervisors regarding appropriate business practices when using NAU data.
Safeguarding the privacy of our student and employee data is the responsibility of all NAU employees. Be sure that you understand applicable rules and regulations and don’t share data with other employees who do not have security access. As much as possible, data should stay on administrative systems rather than be downloaded onto desktops or laptops.
Files stored on desktops and laptops are in a less secure environment, increasing the risk of a security breach.
For more information regarding data security, visit the “Louie Online” website at nau.edu/louie, click on “Faculty and Staff Tools,” and then click on “LOUIE FERPA training and security request forms.” If you are requesting access after completing the required FERPA training, you also need to read the NAU Data Access Policy, and a supervisor must submit a security access form for approval from campus data stewards.
Data stewards are experts working in different campus business areas who analyze requests to be sure there is a legitimate NAU business need for the requested data access. Remember that we all have a responsibility to ensure that data is used appropriately to support the mission of NAU.
Financial Application Systems Development
The Financial Application Systems Team and Comptroller’s office are currently upgrading the Advantage financial system from release level 3.5 to 3.7. Preparations and background work have been underway since early 2008, and the upgrade will have taken over a year before the “go live” date. The upgrade should be fairly seamless for users and will occur over a weekend to minimize system downtime.
This upgrade enhances many existing features and provides several new functions that should increase productivity for Advantage users.
The main areas affected are system navigation, application administration, security, and system administration. For end users the most notable improvements will be found in printing, page navigation, and document attachments. New features include online calculation tools, download-to-Excel capabilities, and new vendor history and document lifecycle inquiry pages. This project upgrades the database from Oracle release 9g to 10g, which improves performance and allows shifting to lower cost Linux servers. Also, NAU will continue to receive valuable first-tier vendor support which is discontinued for Advantage 3.5 after 2009/Q3.
The 3.7 upgrade project lead is Anton Ciochetti of the Comptroller’s office, with ITS technical support from the Financial Application Systems Team led by Ranley E. Sherfey, the DBA Team led by Kim Ramirez, and ISTT Training Team led by Steve Sorden.
