FY08 Strategic Plan for Central Services (2008-2011)
====================================================

(M. Kaletka, M. Leininger, J. Schmidt)

Mission
-------

Provide common central computing services which broadly underpin the
Laboratory\'s Open Science and general technical and business missions.

Context and Assessment of Current State
---------------------------------------

The strategic plan for central services is guided by the [Computing
Division Strategic
Plan](https://cd-docdb.fnal.gov:440/cgi-bin/ShowDocument?docid=1746) and
the strategic directions of the Laboratory program, and MOU's and SLA's
established with other organizations, including internal Laboratory
organizations (other Div's/Sec's). The strategic plan is also guided by
cybersecurity guidance and directives imposed on the Laboratory by DOE.

The Computing Division provides a comprehensive set of central services
which support the daily scientific and business functions of the lab
(web, email, print, storage, database and application development,
backup, etc.), the computing support infrastructure (patching,
inventory, configuration mgmt, antivirus, authentication, metrics and
accounting, etc.), and the computer security infrastructure (inventory,
scanning, automated controls, etc.). While these services are available
to essentially "all comers", not all parts of the Laboratory choose to
use them, resulting in redundant expenditure of effort. In addition,
several of the services have grown to be very complex, with limited
depth of knowledge in the support groups (one or two "experts"), leading
to concerns for future reliability.

Computer security is a well-planned and successful effort but is
particularly impacted by reaction to the cybersecurity guidance and
directives, and frequent short-deadline calls for information, flowing
from various offices in DOE. These frequently do not take good account
of the Open Science model of the Laboratory, so there is a constant
struggle to minimize the impact on the Laboratory's scientific program,
which draws effort away from managing the computer security program of
work.

The requirements of Open Science are understood and incorporated into
the existing environment and work model in areas like planning, risk
assessment, and mitigation. This work is done in coordination with Open
Science Grid.

In FY2008, two external assessments of central services were completed.
The first concentrated rather narrowly on the current state of the
Computing Division's Help Desk and made
[recommendations](https://cd-docdb.fnal.gov:440/cgi-bin/RetrieveFile?docid=2543&version=1&filename=Fermi-Logicalis-ServiceDeskAssessment-V1.0-Dec-2007.doc)
to align the Help Desk with the Service Desk components of the
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework, an
internationally recognized and accepted framework for IT service
management (ITSM). The second assessment looked more deeply at IT
services across the Laboratory and made recommendations for a roadmap
leading to ISO20000 certification on a two year time scale (FY2011), and
organizational changes consolidating the "silos" of IT support across
the Laboratory. These assessments, and in particular the ISO20000
certification roadmap, form a major part of the strategy for central
services for the next two years.

Optional statement about where we are now in carrying out this part of
our mission. Here you can state how this strategic plan aligns with or
interacts with other strategic plans.

Vision
------

Be the provider of innovative, high-quality, secure common computing
services. By providing these common services, contribute to the
Laboratory's successful execution of the current scientific program,
while positioning the Laboratory to successfully compete for future
scientific projects.

Concise statement describing the state we would like to see by 2009.

Stakeholders
------------

Sponsors: Computing Division management; Laboratory management; DOE
management;

Customers: All users of Fermilab computing resources, world-wide,
regardless of affiliation;

Providers:

List the stakeholders for this area of work (sponsors, customers,
providers, and other interested parties). Include any other pertinent
background information about this area of work.

Goals and Objectives 
--------------------

### Overarching Goals

-   Achieve "operational excellence" by following best practices for
    service delivery, quality and change control, customer service and
    satisfaction, etc., through implementation of the ITIL framework
    leading to ISO20000 certification by 2011. This is a
    transformational cultural change which will have significant impacts
    on all aspects of delivery of central services.

-   Fully centralized management of IT infrastructure and services at
    the lab, encompassing all of the currently disjoint and private IT,
    telephony and cyber security infrastructure of AD and Business
    Services and other areas of the lab (a Computing Division strategic
    goal).

-   Stable and secure operating environment which is flexible and
    responsiveness to user needs.

-   Services "marketed" and used throughout the Laboratory (scientific &
    business applications).

-   Plans developed one year ahead and resources in place at least 6
    months ahead of need.

### Central Services

-   Provide robust, stable and secure production central IT services,
    including email, web, printing, global file services, etc.;

    -   Increase the level of support and the level of security for all
        centrally-provided services;

-   Provide robust, stable and secure infrastructure to support the
    major operating systems, e.g. sw distribution, patching, inventory &
    config control, licensing, etc.

-   Provide innovative new services which anticipate customer demand;

### Customer Services

-   Increase customer support staff and end-user effectiveness through
    training and documentation.

-   Improve end-user experience through more intuitive and user-friendly
    interface for customer support.

-   Better automation and integration of account processing.

-   Position to be support centers for OSG, LHC, ILC, etc.

-   Provide support for major desktop operating systems -- Windows,
    Linux, MacOS.

-   Collaborate and integrate efforts across the whole Laboratory,
    including cross-pollinating best practices. Successfully market
    services to other Div/Sec.

### Scientific Applications & Databases

-   Support running experiments at appropriate levels and be ready for
    LHC and ILC requirements.

    -   Agile response to new and rapid shifts of responsibilities and
        demands accompanying the end of Run II data taking and loss of
        effort in the Run II experiments;

-   Develop stronger expertise and support for open source databases and
    tools, reducing the dependency on Oracle, with a goal of reducing
    development and support costs.

### Infrastructure Applications & Databases

-   Lead the way in providing modern information management systems that
    help efficiently manage the work of the Division and the Laboratory,
    provide information on resources and performance at all levels, and
    lead to easier communication.

-   Develop and support those applications which are needed to improve
    the efficiency of the Division while avoiding duplication of
    functionality provided by other parts of the Laboratory.

-   Apply focused effort to improving the efficiency of the HelpDesk in
    processing accounts and node registration, specifically.

-   Successfully market new applications to other Div/Sec to further
    reduce redundant effort and improve efficiency.

### Computer Security

-   Decrease the response time to threats by automating processes
    currently done by humans;

-   Deliver security related services in a way which solicits the
    willing support of users;

    -   Deliver services which are palatable to end-users.

    -   Encourage a participatory culture & integrated security
        management which gets people "on board".

-   Remain proactive in understanding and guarding against new threats
    while maintaining an appropriately open computing environment.

-   Maintain our security life cycle process -- documentation,
    certifications, process, auditability, etc. -- at levels which
    comfortably assure our ability to operate.

-   Continuously improve computer security training programs to maintain
    user and sysadmin skills and respond to new threats and
    technologies.

Enumerate the major goals. For each goal you may optionally give a
bulleted list of specific objectives to be accomplished which may relate
to intermediate stages of progress.

Strategies
----------

-   "Sell" management support of the high-level goal to centralize
    management of IT infrastructure and services at the Laboratory.
    Achieving this goal will require a set of business management
    strategies which demonstrate the cost-effectiveness and other
    benefits to the Laboratory.

-   Apply formal ITIL-derived best practices to the delivery and support
    of services. The ITIL framework applies across the whole range of
    activities and implements a number of key processes, among them
    continuous service improvement.

-   Demonstrate the effectiveness of these first two strategies by
    achieving ISO20000 certification by 2011.

-   Vigorously encourage use of central services; This means central
    services have to be useful, easy to use, flexible, responsive,
    performant, etc., and aggressively marketed to the end-users.

-   Continue to encourage the involvement of the user community in the
    decision process, through e.g. Windows Policy, Unix Users, GCSC
    meeting, sysadmin meeting, web users group, database users group,
    network policy group, etc.

-   Increase efficiency and integration across the Laboratory,
    collaborating better with other Div/Sec/Exp's on common projects,
    and by aggressively looking for opportunities to reduce redundancies
    and consolidate efforts.

-   Reduce effort and increase efficiency through effective
    collaboration with other labs and institutions (particularly taking
    advantage of FRA relationships with ANL and UC).

-   Outsource or use consultants where appropriate, to fill gaps in
    effort or expertise. This includes considering outsourcing major
    efforts where cost/benefit analysis supports the decision.

-   Think long-range for enterprise solutions -- not "labware", use
    supported (commercial or open source) solutions, pay attention to
    TCO in build-vs-buy decisions.

-   Use common methodologies, tools and frameworks for application
    development to achieve consistency and efficiency. Applications
    should share common support data and methods (not duplicate them).

-   Use automation wherever practical and cost-effective.

-   Investigate and adopt rigorous development and test methodologies
    which provide rapid turnaround for projects without sacrificing
    production quality.

-   Maintain life cycle processes which anticipate user needs, changes
    in technology, growth (or decline) in demand, etc. and allow for
    tactical plans to be developed twelve to eighteen months ahead, with
    implementation six months ahead of need.

Enumerate the proposed strategies for meeting the goals.

Resource Needs 
--------------

Staffing for central services will necessarily remain approximately
static. Expertise in several critical areas -- web services, email,
shared storage, backup, for example -- is very thin with perhaps one
real "expert" with little backup and limited prospects for developing
other staff as backup. In addition there is the need to free enough
effort to continue to evolve current services and investigate new ones.

The transformation of our IT processes into the ITIL framework will
require additional resources (effort) in the short term, before
beginning to produce larger long term gains as more efficient processes
are established and IT services are consolidated across the Laboratory.
Consolidation will make some of these resources available in the short
term, but we will have to rely on use of consultants for much of this
effort.

Limited staff resources will increase the need for effective
collaboration and aggressive consolidation of efforts across the
Laboratory, as well as for use of contractors or consultants and
outsourcing. The alternative is to reduce levels of service and slow (or
halt) the introduction of new services, which will have an adverse
effect on the Laboratory's ability to support the current and future
program.

Describe how resource needs (personnel, materials, other) will change as
objectives

are accomplished or as effort for other objectives increases?

Progress Indicators
-------------------

Indicators of effective progress include:

-   Progress towards service excellence indicators derived directly from
    the ITIL framework;

-   Use of central services by a substantial portion of the Laboratory's
    scientific and business program, as measured by the number of
    organizations and users supported, rather than equivalent local
    solutions;

-   Improvement of the levels of central services, as measured through
    SLA and MOU agreements and actual service delivery, and through
    internal, peer and external reviews, etc;

-   Maintaining high "scores" for internal, peer and external reviews of
    computer security process and documentation, combined with
    acceptable low actual rates of vulnerabilities, incidents and
    similar technical indicators.

List indicators will be used to determine progress towards achieving the
goals and assessing how well the goals have been accomplished.

Additional Information
----------------------

If appropriate, describe other constraints on this activity. These might
include technical requirements, schedule, or resource limitations.
Mention any limitations on the scope of the activity or the community
supported by it.

Here also you might want to identify the risks which may affect this
strategic plan -- unforeseen changes in schedule, funding or other
resources, technology, or external factors.