Information Technology welcomes new CIO

Information Technology at Georgia College can best be described as “in transition” upon my arrival as the university’s chief information officer. Allow me to thank students, faculty and staff for the opportunity to join the GC family. Having completed a number of years in higher education, I can honestly say that GC is where I want to be.

Speaking of transitions, a major project is underway to redesign our username and password environment, reducing the number of these needed to access various systems. Team members of Information Technology are working on projects to provide new services while using current resources more efficiently.

We are developing a “Georgia College Cloud” environment, which may be coined “Thundercloud.” As a suggested name, our “Thundercloud” is being designed to provide access to campus software and computing resources from any networkable appliance, including laptops, iPads or smartphones. Expect to see more information on this project later in the semester. Working in partnership with other offices, expect to see a new emergency notification system and additional text messaging capabilities coming in September.

We are also updating those policies and procedures that are essential in keeping your information safe and secure and the campus in compliance with system, state and federal laws, and guidelines.  Our network team is busy with the campus network, looking at ways to increase redundancy and reduce network outages.  Students should notice enhanced network speed in the Residence Halls, as we have ramped the bandwidth and have installed new equipment to spot potential bandwidth issues and to proactively intervene.

Productive conversations have already occurred with SGA President Cody Allen, and my meeting with SGA is set for early September.  In addition, I look forward to working closely with students on the Student Technology Fee Committee to explore ways to push technology capabilities closer to where students gather and live.

- Dr. Robert Orr

Posted by Robert Orr on Aug 30 2012. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.