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Policies and Documents

Policy Statement on Use of ITS Test Equipment

Purpose
This policy sets the following parameters regarding use of ITS test equipment:

• Definition of test system
• Definition of non-production use
• Definition of limited use agreement
• Scope of use and implementation support
• Procedure for obtaining permission to use equipment and/or ITS staff for testing
• Description of maintenance and continuity of service
• Duration of limited use agreement and terms for discontinuation of service

Rationale
In order to offer expedient and effective service to School of Medicine entities looking to establish electronic information systems for testing or feasibility study, ITS maintains a variety of hardware and software resources which are permanently allocated for testing or other non-production use. This provides ITS with the means to temporarily implement a broad range of IT solutions with very short turnaround. ITS generally considers requests for test implementations on a case-by-case basis. See Procedures below for more detail.

Because the demand for systems discovery and testing is great and resources are limited, ITS requires that correct procedures and well-established guidelines be followed in acquiring these resources for temporary use. This will ensure that resources are available when needed and that ITS can provide effective service to the School community without compromising administrative and enterprise commitments.

Definitions

Test system: As defined in this policy, any electronic information system which is being implemented for the purposes of evaluating functionality or assessing suitability to business practice, rather than the conduct of actual business. Regardless of whether they are actually being "tested," test systems are in all cases regarded as temporary and non-production (see below).

Non-production use: This term refers to a level of IT support and resources for a system which is non-priority and non-mission-critical. Specifically, this term applies to all information systems which have been deployed on ITS test equipment, as described above. Systems designated as test will not receive production level support. ITS can make no guarantee of level of service, performance, storage, or system availability.

Please refer to the Policy Statement on Systems Maintenance and Downtime Notification for more detailed descriptions of production systems and services.

Limited use agreement: This term refers to an agreement between ITS and the sponsoring organization for a test system implementation which acknowledges:

1. Test equipment may not be solely apportioned for a single application; the environment may be shared
2. Performance, storage and support expectations should be non-production level (see above)
3. Duration of test implementation is limited
4. Data and configurations will likely not be transferable to production unless certified in advance
5. Systems identified as initially or short-term business critical or data which has regulatory implications cannot be implemented in test

Scope of Use and Implementation Support

Scope of Use - systems operating as test should not during the testing period

· have a user population outside of the immediate group conducting the test or feasibility study
· provide mission-critical data or resources to an enterprise population
· become business-critical to the testing group or its administration

Implementation Support - ITS will provide technical and evaluative services to the test implementation project, however responsibility for coordinating testing efforts among internal staff, interaction with system vendors, and all other non-technical items shall remain the responsibility of the unit sponsoring the test. ITS will meet all timeline requirements stated in the project proposal and approved by the CIO. ITS cannot assume additional technical or other support obligations beyond the scope of the approved project proposal for a test system, and system availability and maintenance will be governed by the limited use agreement.

Procedures

ITS offers testing resources and test implementation support to School of Medicine administrative and department-level (or department approved) initiatives only. In order to obtain permission and support for a test system implementation on ITS equipment, utilizing ITS staff or other resources, the following procedure should be followed:

1. No later than 30 days prior to the desired implementation date, a written project proposal should be submitted to the ITS office, c/o Rehan Khan, Chief Information Officer. For this policy, email does qualify as a written proposal.
2. Proposals should contain the following requirements and guidelines:
   • Description of system to be implemented
   • Description of product vendor and contact information (if applicable)
   • Business case for testing and eventual production implementation in SOM
   • Justification for School-level resource allocation to the project
   • Length of testing period
   • Technical specifications and system requirements, if known (otherwise include a meeting proposal for ITS staff to conduct an assessment)
   • All timelines for achievables/deliverables (use hard dates, not generalized)
3. ITS will review all proposals within two weeks and will assess viability based on the following criteria:
   • Current availability of non-production resources and adaptability of existing resources to system requirements
   • Availability of existing analogous resources within the School or University
   • Quality and depth of written proposal and system's suitability for business function stated in proposal
   • System's potential to benefit to the entire School community
   • System's potential to fulfill an non-serviced but urgent need as acknowledged by SOM Administration
   • Suitability of project and/or project timelines for ITS and SOM long-term IT strategies
   • Required duration of equipment allocation
   • Availability of supplemental funding, should equipment require enhancement to meet minimum system standards
4. Upon completion of review, ITS will draft a formal response letter to the proposal, indicating whether the proposal has been approved, disapproved, or requires more information to proceed. If the proposal was not submitted by chair or director of the requesting party, the recognized head of the unit will be copied on the response letter.
5. In the case of disapproval, applicants may appeal in writing to the CIO for further consideration or may reapply after six months. In the case of more information needed, requestor will submit all requested information within five working days of receipt of request, or proposal will automatically be disapproved. In such a circumstance, appeals or exception requests can be made of the CIO if more time is required to produce supplemental items.
6. In the case of approval, requestor will review carefully the response and adjust timeline and/or level of service expectations as appropriate per feedback. A Limited Use Agreement, customized for the project, must be signed and returned to ITS before final test implementation can begin. This document will enumerate all ITS deliverables and expectations for the test period.
7. ITS will begin implementation on schedule with approved (possibly amended) proposal requirements and terms of Limited Use Agreement.

Description of Maintenance and Continuity of Service

Though ITS will make its best effort to maintain test systems and provide the widest availability possible, emergency response and production level service for such systems will not be possible. Where production support requirements conflict with test system maintenance procedures, production requirements will be given top priority and test systems will return to service once all production issues are resolved. ITS personnel will make all reasonable efforts to notify test populations of routine maintenance, extensive downtime or performance degradation, per the terms of the ITS Systems Maintenance and Downtime Notification Policy:

systems_maintenance.html

Any test system which is judged by ITS to cause a breach of security, regulatory non-compliance, deleterious network performance, or other non-desirable effect on the School's IT environment at large will be shut down immediately. All agreements between ITS and unit sponsoring the test system will be superceded by this action.

ITS makes no warranty of its ability to maintain or support any applications or systems that are implemented on ITS equipment or by ITS staff apart from the equipment and operating systems which power them. The unit sponsoring the test implementation should make sure that all resources (vendor support, training manuals, etc.) are available before proceeding with use of the system. ITS cannot participate in functional presentations, training, or other events of a non-technical nature related to the test system.

Duration of Limited Use Agreement

Because ITS does not support quasi-production systems (systems whose business requirements demand production level services, but because of cost or other considerations choose to risk existing without), ITS will support a test system implementation only for a finite period specified in the agreement. Thirty days prior to expiration of this testing period, ITS will inform the sponsoring unit of intent to shut down the system and recover allocated test resources upon expiration of the agreement. Upon completion of the test period, the sponsoring unit has the following options:

1. Submit another project proposal to ITS defining requirements for production level implementation and support for the system. ITS will follow the same procedure and evaluate the proposal based on the same criteria as the original test proposal. If approved, ITS will draft a cost estimate for production level implementation and ongoing support, for which the sponsoring unit must acquire funding in order to proceed.
2. Request, in writing, an extension of the testing period to the CIO with justifications for the extension. If approved, ITS will continue to provide service and resources until the end of the extension period, at which time the system will be automatically shut down unless production implementation is reasonably sought.
3. Prepare the system for shutdown by extracting all data and other items of value from the system prior to the end of the testing period. Upon system shut down, ITS will completely reinitialize the equipment and reallocate to other projects, thus it will be impossible to recover any data from test systems after the expiration of the testing period.