An important part of the One IT initiative’s Discovery Phase has been the work of 12 working groups that brought together colleagues from across UCLA to contribute their expertise, experience and perspectives.
The working groups were created to provide focused input across areas that are essential to UCLA’s technology environment. They were organized around three broad perspectives: constituent experiences, including students, faculty and staff; campus capabilities, including research, instruction, security, and operations enablement; and technology capabilities, including infrastructure, media and audiovisual services, data and analytics, web, accessibility, and collaboration, and customer success and user experience.
Within these areas, working group members were asked to look closely at how technology supports the university today and where opportunities exist to improve the experience and delivery of IT services. They brought knowledge from their units and disciplines, reviewed Discovery data, identified pain points and opportunities, considered operational impacts and dependencies, and helped translate what they learned into findings and recommendations.
The combination of data and campus expertise was important. The Discovery data provided working groups with a view into UCLA’s technology capabilities, products and services, while members brought the context needed to understand what those findings mean in practice. Their perspectives helped surface where greater alignment may be beneficial, where specialized needs must be considered, and where changes to services, processes or investments could better support UCLA’s mission.
Each working group has now completed its work and submitted a final report with findings and recommendations. Collectively, these reports provide perspectives across a broad range of UCLA’s technology environment and represent an important set of inputs for the next phase of One IT.
Sincere appreciation goes to everyone who contributed their time, expertise and perspectives to this effort. The work required a meaningful commitment of time, collaboration and thoughtful consideration of needs across UCLA. Thank you to all who participated for bringing your experience, insights and commitment to the university to this important work.
UCLA is advancing a more secure and resilient technology environment by transitioning from Trellix to CrowdStrike, the next evolution of campus endpoint detection and response (EDR) and the only UC systemwide-approved EDR product. The transition strengthens protection against cybersecurity threats while maintaining alignment with existing UC cybersecurity requirements as the UC system transitions vendors from Trellix to CrowdStrike.
Over the next month, DTS will continue pre-planning and proof-of-concept activities for the campuswide transition from Trellix to CrowdStrike. These efforts will validate the deployment approach, prepare communications, and establish a strong foundation for a smooth, phased transition beginning at the start of fall in partnership with the campus.
The Network Unification program continued to build on July’s pilot migrations, focusing on supporting participating campus groups, strengthening the new network, and applying lessons learned as the program prepares for broader campus rollout.
Pilot Support and Lessons Learned
Following the Telecommunications Room (TR) Pilot migrations last month, the team supported participating groups as they transitioned to the new network. Feedback from participants and project teams is being used to identify what worked well and where improvements can be made before expanding to more of campus.
Device Registration
The team also continued enhancing the Device Registration Portal, which provides a simpler way to connect and manage devices on the new network. Additional improvements are planned in the coming months to support the broader campus rollout.
Together, these efforts are helping UCLA prepare for a smoother, more reliable transition to a unified campus network.
The Digital Accessibility program enters the new academic year with its governance structure in place and expanded resources available to help the campus community improve the accessibility of digital content and services. These efforts support UCLA’s continued progress toward meeting the University of California’s systemwide IT Accessibility Policy (IMT-1300) and federal accessibility requirements.
Governance and Leadership
The Digital Accessibility Steering Committee has reached an important milestone with its leadership and key roles now in place. Athena Jackson, Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian, and Erin Sanders O’Leary, Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, are formally serving as co-chairs alongside Lucy Avetisyan, Associate Vice Chancellor & Chief Information Officer. All five coordinator roles required under UC policy have also been confirmed, establishing clear accountability and coordination as the program moves forward.
Tools and Resources for Campus
The program continues to expand resources to help faculty and staff identify and address accessibility issues. Grackle Workspace will launch in September for g.ucla.edu accounts, helping users improve accessibility in Google Docs, Slides and Sheets. UDOIT is now available in Bruin Learn to help instructors identify and address accessibility issues in course content. Additional resources are available to help campus units improve the accessibility of PDFs and websites.
The Digital Accessibility Hub serves as the campus resource for accessibility guidance, tools and support. With governance in place and resources continuing to expand, the focus this fall is on helping schools and administrative units prioritize and take meaningful action to improve digital accessibility across UCLA.
Bruin Financial Aid (BFA) continues to strengthen the systems, processes, and partnerships that support UCLA's financial aid operations and student experience, while successfully delivering the critical financial aid processing students depend on.
The BFA team successfully supported summer financial aid and loan processing, commenced Fall disbursements, and entered Year 2 of BFA processing with more than $102 million already disbursed to date across summer and fall terms. This represents an important operational milestone for BFA and demonstrates the team's ability to manage complex, high-volume financial aid processing while continuing to strengthen the underlying system and operating model.
With the program transitioning from implementation to sustainable operations, the team has also established a long-term support structure, including ServiceNow as the intake point for issues and enhancement requests. This provides a more consistent mechanism for managing operational needs, prioritizing improvements, and supporting BFA over the long term.
Alongside this operational delivery, functional and technical teams have continued to improve the system. Recent work has strengthened federal and state aid processing, enrollment-based processing, and data integrity. The team has also completed census configuration updates and Satisfactory Academic Progress configuration to support accurate and reliable processing going forward.
At the same time, the BFA team is preparing for evolving federal financial aid requirements. Functional and technical teams are working together to assess impacts, implement required system changes, and maintain continuity for students as requirements evolve.
Taken together, this work reflects an important evolution for BFA: the team is not only sustaining the system following implementation, but successfully operating it at scale while building the capabilities needed for long-term success. The focus moving forward remains on reliable operations, reduced operational risk, stronger internal capabilities, continuous improvement, and an improved experience for students and the campus teams who support them.
The BFA Partners Forum will continue to provide a venue for collaboration, transparency, and engagement across campus as priorities and needs evolve.