Andrew Newman - Yale University

Bio

Andrew has spent the last 21 years at Yale University working on campus-wide infrastructure initiatives. He has been active in the design and deployment of Yale's high-speed network as well as the establishment of policies, services and best practices aimed at network stability and ease of management. Andrew's interests include the design of scalable authentication mechanisms and the management of long-term institutional credentials. Additional areas of expertise include the design of flexible security models in a multi-tier software environment and the analysis of security practices for adherence to stated standards.

While at Yale, Andrew has been responsible for designing (and initially supporting) the first campus-wide NetID subsystem whereby all community members could authenticate to campus resources with a single durable identifier. In parallel with this effort was the establishment of Kerberos as the campus standard intra-University authentication framework.

In his current role as Director of Technology & Planning, Andrew leads a focused group of senior technologists who help set the University standards for a significant portion of the campus Information Technology infrastructure. Included in this effort is the design and deployment of the Central Authentication Server (CAS) that allows safe distributed web-based authentication by members of the campus community. Other group initiatives include the roll-out of Yale's first student-oriented campus portal based upon the open source JA-SIG uPortal software.

Platform Statement

In my service to Yale as Director of Technology & Planning I have continually promoted the value of both the use and contribution to community source software initiatives.

Several years ago our industry embraced the concept of a portal and "loved it to death" through various marketing efforts that made even the most stalwart enthusiast a little cynical. Curiously, none of this managed to detract from the basic idea that a properly implemented and deployed campus portal can help to enhance the usability and accessibility of a virtually unlimited number of applications. Through a common look and feel as well as such features as single sign-on, a level of integration can be accomplished that will daily serve all users. Most administrators I have chatted with acknowledge that they see a coordinated relationship between applications emerge only after the applications have been deployed. Properly positioned portal technology can allow IT professionals to honestly tell these administrators that it isn't too late to apply this latent coordination without rewriting the applications themselves.

Over and over again we see that a successful portal roll-out requires both a strong local commitment to maximally utilizing portal features combined with a strong software platform upon which these features rest. JA-SIG serves the education community by helping to address both of these issues. On one hand the regular conferences provide an opportunity for each of us to learn about what has worked as well as (notably) what hasn't and formulate success strategies. On the other hand, the very strong software offering represented by the uPortal provides a community supported software base that allows each school to realize their portal vision.

To continue our relevance in higher education, JA-SIG uPortal faces two challenges:

1. Establish a flexible but predictable funding model to support the ongoing development efforts necessary to keep the uPortal software base properly maintained.

2. Establish a consistent commitment to proper oversight of the software code base to assure that contributions are of high quality and contributors are properly briefed as regards coding standards and basic architectural principles.

While I am, admittedly, a late comer to the many questions of funding, I have found value in a model that allows certain "leadership" schools to voluntarily contribute a suggested annual fee and, in exchange, be given the opportunity to more directly influence the strategic direction of the project. Beyond this, however, I believe that we should continue to actively recruit volunteers from among the JA-SIG membership to serve as overseers of the software. These individuals should be selected based upon the value of their past contributions rather than the vigor with which they offer future contributions. Any remuneration for services rendered needs to be considered from the perspective of value versus equity. In other words we need to be certain that all high quality contributors are offered a fee for their services if any are. Absent a prearranged agreement, all contributions shall be considered voluntary and evaluated for merit. The goal here would be to assure the quality of the code base moving forward over all other considerations.

As far as future directions are concerned, I would like to see uPortal continue to aggressively pursue existing standards and "winning" future open standard initiatives. These would include Portlet and WSRP standards but also any open frameworks that might make the portal software actually "play" better with strategic university initiatives. While I want to acknowledge limited resources up front, I would be willing to consider concrete examples of interoperability with:

1. Standards-based declarative workflow engines.

2. Learning management systems (e.g. Sakai)

3. Student services software products (e.g. Banner)

4. Microsoft SharePoint

5. Data warehousing and mining report generation middleware

6. Financial modeling software

All of this would be with an eye toward assuring maximal visibility of the uPortal software to all of the strategic planners that can benefit from being inspired by a uPortal solution for their campus.