The Interoperability Initiative recently celebrated its first birthday! It was born at Union South during a kickoff meeting on July 22, 2019. Although it was “conceived” only eight months earlier in November 2018, there was nothing premature about it. A great amount of loving care was put into preparations for the initiative’s arrival. A three-week design sprint involving 60-plus friends and extended family members from across the university and an extensive discovery phase made sure that the proud program management team was physically and financially ready to welcome the initiative into the world.
From that event forward, through long days and even some sleepless nights, the program management team devotedly charted a path forward. Through research and experience gained from others who have been there before, the team created service principles and a roadmap to help guide the successful growth and maturation of its fledgling initiative. Several developmental milestones mark the aspirations of the doting program management team:
Coordinated upbringing with sibling/cousin initiatives
In order to ensure efficient use of university family resources and reduce conflicting or counter-productive techniques, the Interop team coordinates closely with its relatives. The initiative engages in regular outreach to other initiatives, units, and programs, such as:
- Administrative Transformation Program
- OneBadger Constituent Relationship Management Initiative
- PlanUW
- Procure-to-Pay (P2P)
In addition, the Interop team regularly seeks feedback from established groups, like the Identity and Access Management Council, and also created the Enterprise Resource Planning/Interop Data Governance Task Force in collaboration with the Office of Data Management and Analytics Services (ODMAS). The evolving task force has created foundational processes and is working on prioritized domains and implementation guidance for ERP interfaces.
Healthy socialization & an ability to play well with others
The Interop team wants its young initiative to do much more than have a strong developmental connection with relatives. It also wants Interop to thrive in the broader community, helping others work together seamlessly to build a better, more interconnected environment in which to live and work. To this end, the team has dedicated much time to evaluating and selecting the Integration Platform tools and support to help Interop become the best team player it can be. Extensive RFI/RFP processes led to the selection of Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services (IICS) as the Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) solution and Apigee as the API management platform.
Along with the development of an Integrator Portal, these tools will help developers across the university integrate their applications efficiently with other applications and university data sources, as well as simplify the process of integrating off-the-shelf and cloud applications into the UW environment.
A strong sense of self & knowing one’s roots
The Interoperability Initiative needs to know itself and its purpose, and part of that is knowing about others who are interacting with it:
- Who is this user?
- Where did they come from and what do they need access to?
- Should they be allowed access to anything, or should they be removed?
An additional RFI process took place to identify tools and support for Identity Governance & Administration (IGA). Deep-dive research into open-source IGA solutions resulted in the selection of Grouper for role and resource catalogs and midPoint for provisioning (creating) and deprovisioning (deleting) accounts. Grouper and midPoint are part of the InCommon Trusted Access Platform used by many higher education peer institutions, and their implementations are now underway.
Control over personal preferences & interests, be who you want to be
Similar to knowing itself by knowing others, Interop will achieve success throughout its lifespan by helping others express their own personal preferences and interact with university systems in a way that is most effective for each individual. This is where Constituent Identity & Access Management (CIAM) comes in. Concurrent with the RFI process for IGA, the Interop team sought out CIAM solutions culminating in more deep-dive research and the selection of Salesforce Community cloud as the university’s CIAM tool.
In another example of the initiative’s early abilities to play well with others, Interop collaborated with the OneBadger CRM initiative to ensure the selection of a coordinated solution for user profile management. This encompasses user preferences, personalization, enrichment/interest settings, social platform login, as well as access to various support communities, like help desk or service provider portals. The joint effort also selected Huron as a common partner to assist in the successful implementation of the CIAM solution.
The first year of the Interoperability Initiative’s life has flown by and so much has happened over that span. The program team is extremely proud of the growth and progress it has made so far, none of which would have been possible without the expertise, collaboration, and cooperation of so many groups and individuals making up the university family. The gratitude of the program team and executive sponsorship is only overshadowed by their excitement for continued progress and the many further accomplishments in Interop’s bright future. Stay in touch to see what is on the horizon.