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78 | UITS Annual Report | 2011/2012
The Role of ICT in Improving the quality and Availabil ity of Higher Education
Banner Access and Distributed Security System Presented at SunGard Middle
East User Group Conference
According to the seminar series on “New Technologies in Education�?, University IT Services presented the “The Role of ICT in
Improving the quality and Availability of Higher Education�?. The presentation was focused on the role of ICT on human life, Role
of ICT in higher education, historical approach of ICT within UAE and UAEU contribution. The presenter also briefly described the
current UAEU infrastructure and the current services being provided by UITS. The whole session was much interactive and
audience showed a positive feedback and satisfaction against the ICT services within UAEU.
UITS gave a presentation at SunGard Middle East User Group Conference (SMEUG 2011) on a system that was developed in-
house. Previously if a UAEU employee required access to UAEU ERP system (also known as Banner), she/he had to complete a
paper form, get required departmental approval, this form is then passed to UITS helpdesk who in turn creates a ticket to
responsible teams to create/update the requester's user account per the data custodian's specified permissions. To help speed up
the process and grant system data custodian a faster tool to manage user's access to system, UITS developed a system that
allows UAEU employee to submit an online request specifying the type of access required to Banner. This request is then
automatically forwarded to requester's managers for approval and afterwards to the appropriate data custodian. The data
custodian can go online and immediately grant the appropriate access to the requester, who in turn can then access the system
right away. At each stage of the request, the requester can view online the status of the request and will also receive email
notifications on status updates. This solution has reduced the overhead on all departments involved in this process, and
minimized the timeline considerably. In addition, UITS has developed ways to allow the data custodians full permission to
manage their system access and specify the type of access for each form or report (update or query). Thus, this solution has
empowered data custodians to manage their systems more effectively, and helped UITS to focus on other core functions.