IT service disruption prompts review committee to determine, understand causes

MEMORANDUM
TO: The UAA Community
FROM: Mike Driscoll
Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
RE: IT SERVICE DISRUPTION REVIEW COMMITTEE

The catastrophic failure of UAA's primary data storage on Sunday, Nov. 8, 2009 resulted in major disruption of a number of core technology services, significantly impacting UAA's ability to function. Vice Provost and CIO Rich Whitney provided a summary of the event (as posted in UAA Green and Gold) on Nov. 13, shortly after services were restored. At that time Dr. Whitney also asked me to consider appointing an independent panel to review the incident with the goals of learning exactly what happened, evaluating the response, and making recommendations to help reduce the likelihood of a recurrence and to improve our response to future crisis situations.

While I believe that our IT staff responded to the incident with great skill and dedication, I think that Dr. Whitney's suggestion is a good one. After consultation, I have appointed a review panel and charged them with the following tasks:

• Document in non-technical language the events leading up to the failure of the storage system.
• Document in non-technical language the failure and the university-steps taken to recover from the failure and restore services.
• Document the impact of the failure on core university services such as course delivery, business process and communication at all of UAA's locations.
• Document the university's response to the failure in terms of stakeholder communication, Campus Response Team (CRT) engagement, decision making, and use of alternate means to provide services.
• Identify best practices in the handling of the event that could inform the response of others in similar circumstances.
• Make recommendations for changes that may reduce the likelihood of significant outages in the future, that will speed restoration of services, and that will improve university response and communication in future incidents.
• If appropriate, suggest reallocation of resources to reduce the likelihood of future incidents or to improve the university's response.

I have asked the review panel to try to have a report to me by Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009. Once it is completed, I will share the report with the UAA community.

Bob McDonnell (Director, General Support Services), Anne Bridges (Past Faculty Senate President), Kim Stanford (Former University Assembly President), Jeff Oliver (Senior Electronic Media Specialist, University Advancement), and Patty Itchoak (Director of Electronic Student Services, Enrollment Management) have kindly agreed to serve as the review panel. Bob McDonnell will serve as chair.

The review panel will have the full cooperation and support of IT Services and the Office of Academic Affairs as they go about their work. I encourage the university community to support this review
committee and the process.