If you have any questions, please feel free to contact any TAC members or send email to its-tac@lists.hawaii.edu. We’ll endeavor to document any questions that we get on this page.
Yes, there are several times it makes sense to reach out to the TAC including:
1) If you’re leading a project that will be deploying a new product or technology. The TAC can work with you to make sure your project fits into the ITS architecture, or when appropriate, adjust the ITS architecture to address the changers your project introduces.
2) If you’re experimenting with new technology that may eventually be used by ITS. The TAC would like to keep track of the technologies with which we are experimenting, so we can avoid duplication or connect people together with common interests or requirements.
3) If you have an idea on something the TAC should address. We want everyone to feel some ownership of the ITS architecture. So if you have suggested changes, talk to any of the TAC members and he/she can bring the issue forward to the group.
The ITS Directors have asked the TAC to escalate to them any architectural decisions that are felt to be particularly strategic, controversial or have a large impact on the organization. For example, the TAC escalated its “Patching Principle” to the ITS Directors because the principle could have significant impact on daily operations across ITS.
Many large universities have developed fairly large and mature enterprise architecture programs. “Enterprise architecture” is a comprehensive program that tries to align business needs with technical solutions. Wisconsin, for example, has about four staff dedicated toward its enterprise architecture.
Here at UH our goals are more modest. Rather than pursue a larger enterprise architecture program, we’ve decided to focus on the area where we think we have the most need, technical architecture. We hope this gives us the most benefit for a modest investment of our time.
There is a special interest group of higher education architects called ITANA (which is a non-exact acronym for Information Technology Architects in Academia). Visit their web site for more information.
Bricks describe the individual components that make up the technical architecture. Bricks identify the planned life cycle for technologies within a each domain. They are useful for anyone who plans on building upon or leveraging a specific technical component.
Practically, a brick is a document that we use to define what technologies we’ll use in ITS and how long we plan on using them.
Principles are a set of high-level statements that establish certain boundaries and criteria used in the decision making process. Principles define the general rules and guidelines for the use and deployment of IT resources across the organization. Principles are most useful when design or implementation decisions are being made.
Our email group is its-tac@lists.hawaii.edu. Or email any member of the team.