Background: Managing the Information Technology Facility (ITF) is a cooperative effort between several University of Iowa departments. Operation and maintenance activities pose both benefits, and risk, to the reliability of the facility. This Change Management (CM) process actively manages that risk through approvals and notification.
Exclusion: This process does not cover HCIS, ITS, and Research server & storage computing systems (i.e. data hall critical loads) as these are managed separately by each organization.
Reasons and objectives:
- Facility critical load reliability,
- Facility operation and maintenance action coordination,
- Communication in advance to involved groups for scheduled operation and maintenance of both primary and redundant facility systems,
- Documentation and communication after the fact for any emergent adjustments, repairs or system operations.
Requirement: All operations, service work, and modifications to ITF shall to be made in accordance with this CM process. Touch points to this process include back up power (generator and fuel systems), mechanical, cooling, electrical systems, building/core network services, building phone systems, physical security and safety of the facility.
- Proposed changes are reviewed by ITF Leadership Team (ITF LT) at the weekly coordination meeting – currently scheduled Tuesday’s at 10:00AM. The ITF LT membership includes Facilities Management (FM) Area Maintenance, Health Care Information Systems (HCIS), Information Technology Services (ITS) and FM Utilities and Energy Management.
- The ITF LT should be contacted by an email to the ITF-LT-Status email group.
- The ITF LT prepares and publishes an Outlook Calendar, RES-ITF-Calendar, updated with all approved changes and events that are scheduled to occur.
- The goal of the ITF LT is to review, assess, fully understand, and communicate the risk of proposed changes at ITF. In order to provide time for this process, the advance notice goal for changes at ITF is one week. However, it could take longer. An email to the ITF-LT-Status email group is required to initiate the CM review process.
- The ITF-LT-Status group will publish scheduled work on the RES-ITF-Calendar and notify change requestor of approval.
- For emergent (i.e. emergency) situations the required fixes and adjustments should be pursued in an expedient manner. However, communication of the situation should be made at the earliest opportunity to:
- FM Work Control at (319) 335-5071 and the on-call ITF Duty Officer at (319) 313-2601 (leave message)
- The ITF LT recognizes that there are recurring changes at ITF, both critical and routine. Once an understanding has been reached for these situations, a recurring appointment may be authorized and placed on the RES-ITF-Calendar. This then serves as advance notification and approval for the change. If an instance of the recurring appointment changes, notification of that alteration to plan must be given to the ITF-LT-Status email group.
- All system inputs will have a designated “normal” position. Do not modify any system inputs, either by hand operation or via computer systems without approval of the ITF-LT-Status group.
- The ITF maintenance office will maintain a summary of ITF system conditions, along with notes for any items out of their normal operating or maintenance conditions.
- Information Technology Facility security controls are expected to remain active during change/maintenance events, and disabling a control (environmental and/or physical security) will occur only by explicit approval of the Leadership Team.
- This document will be reviewed annually, at a minimum.