IT project portfolio - UW–⁠Madison Information Technology

IT projects and strategic initiatives are high-impact and cover a wide range of scope and reach. Projects and initiatives are undertaken in support of furthering the university mission of teaching, research and outreach. Projects and initiatives are centered in both the Division of Information Technology and distributed university IT departments.

Project consultation Project intake form

Project websites & pages

1Password

The University of Wisconsin–‍Madison, like many organizations, faces significant challenges related to password management. The 1Password project delivers a more secure Password Manager solution and superior user experience for faculty, staff and students. It also enables us to provide a trusted campus solution to centralize password management, enhance security, and improve operational efficiency.

CSSC Data Center and Supernode Relocation Study

The purpose of this project is to formally hire a space location consultant and a data center facility size and design consultant to provide recommendations for the future location, size and design of the CSSC supernode and adjacent Computer Science data center space.

Cybersecurity Maturity Model Level 2 Certification (CMMC) Phase 1

The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) project is intended to enable the University’s ability to conduct regulated research for the Department of Defense (DoD) by developing a secure research computing environment that meets CMMC compliance requirements for U.S. Federal Government Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) Defense Categories. The effort is in support of an Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR)’s strategic priority to increase DoD research funding and expand the university’s national security-oriented research and education opportunities.

MyUW Forward Project

The MyUW Forward Project will deliver an updated, easy-to-use interface with new features tailored to you—whether you’re an applicant exploring the university, a student accessing course materials, an instructor managing classes, staff navigating university resources or an advisor supporting students.

Program Assessment Tool Transition Project

Academic program assessment at UW–‍Madison evaluates how effectively students achieve high‑level learning outcomes across courses and experiences. To support this work, the university currently relies on a single system, HelioCampus AC, which no longer meets campus needs. This project replaces that system by identifying stakeholder requirements, planning user transition and data migration, piloting and evaluating new tools, and addressing data governance, cybersecurity, and digital accessibility—culminating in the full implementation of a modern platform to support program‑level assessment across campus.

UW–Madison Profile Project

UW–‍Madison Profile aims to be our campus's centralized place for faculty, staff, students and prospective students to manage their identity information. UW–‍Madison Profile brings data stored in many separate systems and resources together into one user-friendly place.

Active Directory Migrations Program

The Active Directory Migrations Project is a multi-year initiative to centralize the university’s distributed directory environments into one Campus Active Directory (CAD) environment.

AI Virtual Course Assistant Proof of Concept (LearningClues Pilot)

Virtual course assistants hold promise as a learning companion for students. This proof of concept conducted with a vendor partner seeks to define business requirements that reflect desired outcomes for students and stakeholders, assess overall support needs, determine scalability requirements for a course assistant, and establish parameters for assessing return on investment for this type of tool.

Gutenberg Transition

DoIT's WiscWeb team and the Office of Strategic Communication’s Digital Strategy team are collaborating to develop a future block-based (Gutenberg) UW Theme and transition all current WiscWeb sites to the new theme. Block editing introduces a fundamental change to WordPress, offering greater flexibility, drag-and-drop design tools and pre-built patterns for creating dynamic layouts. This upgrade will support a more modern, user-friendly and accessible web experience for the university community.

ITSM Tool Replacement

DoIT’s IT service management (ITSM) tool is a crucial part of IT service delivery and enables functions of the DoIT operational framework. Cherwell, the software that runs our ITSM tool known as WiscIT, will reach end-of-life on December 17, 2026. We will need to replace Cherwell to maintain DoIT essential IT service management functions.

Smart Access Program

The Smart Access Program is a multi-year initiative designed to bolster UW–‍Madison's cybersecurity infrastructure and reduce risk by adopting a Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) framework.

Supporting Wisconsin RISE Initiatives

Through RISE‑funded investments, DoIT is strengthening UW–‍Madison’s research cyberinfrastructure to accelerate AI‑enabled and data‑intensive scholarship. These efforts focus on making it easier for researchers to move, manage, and analyze data at scale by expanding automated data lifecycle workflows, improving research data management and compliance capabilities, and identifying robust AI and machine‑learning platforms for campus use. Collectively, this work connects research data sources, secure storage, and computing environments; enhances discovery, governance, and collaboration around research data; and provides guidance and infrastructure for running machine‑learning workflows on campus and in the cloud. By combining technical integrations, platform discovery, and hands‑on consulting and training, DoIT is enabling researchers to more effectively leverage AI and big data in support of the RISE‑AI priorities.

The Research Cyberinfrastructure group within the Division of Information Technology is enabling the RISE initiative alongside the Center for High Throughput Computing, the Data Science Institute, the Data Science Hub, and the School of Medicine and Public Health's Informatics and Information Technology groups.

Administrative Transformation Program

The Administrative Transformation Program (ATP) is on a mission to rebuild finance, human resources, and research administration systems and services at every institution within the University of Wisconsin System. The goal is to reduce the complexity of the current administrative environment and refocus valuable staff time on UW’s mission of education, research, and outreach.

Course Evaluation Tool Transition Project

UW–‍Madison has begun a multi-year transition from HelioCampus Assessment and Credentialing (formerly AEFIS) to a new system called, Blue, for digital course evaluations. A select number of departments began piloting the system in fall 2025. Driven by a need for enhanced functionality and improved user experience – as evidenced by users across campus (including via a survey) and via an in-depth technical review – the decision to transition to Blue was made to better meet the evolving needs of campus, instructors and students.

IT Service Excellence Program

Individual service teams have independently managed customer databases, service eligibility, usage tracking, billing, and more–which has led to fragmented user experiences and duplicated efforts. With the imminent end-of-life of Cherwell, our current ITSM tool, along with the migration of HR and billing functions to Workday, there's an urgent need to explore new IT Service Management and complementary tools. An IT Service Excellence program aims to take advantage of this opportunity by making incremental improvements to how we deliver and administer our services. The first project in the program is the ITSM Tool Replacement project.

Network modernization

Current network segmentation has scaling and flexibility limitations and is not ready for Smart Access micro-segmentation requirements. Resolution: Evaluate more modern and flexible alternative network separation (segmentation) options to improve network segmentation scalability, reliability, flexibility, and programmability.

University Digital Accessibility Initiative

The purpose of the University Digital Accessibility Initiative is to establish a sustainable university infrastructure for content creators within each school, college and division to create, develop and procure digital tools and electronic resources that are accessible, as required under the new federal rule for the Americans with Disabilities Act. This new rule establishes, for the first time, technical standards for digital accessibility that public higher education institutions must follow.