ServiceNow is approaching its second year at URI.  Live for Fall 2022 semester for ITS and Dining Services Help Desk incidents, a team of implementers has been rolling out both additional departments and services since then.  ServiceNow is now in by 75 work groups at URI across numerous departments for Incident Management, Request Management, Knowledge Articles and Problem Management.

Reaching beyond Incidents, ServiceNow requests, tasks, work groups and Dashboards have supported the IT Contract Review since it’s inception in early 2023.  The process allows faculty and staff to submit IT Security Reviews via the IT Contract Review web page as well as features for Strategic Procurement to submit for IT Contract Reviews as purchases are received. ServiceNow also provides leadership with detailed graphical reports on volume, time spent under review and outcomes for a day or over time.

New features of ServiceNow in 2024 include supporting the implementation of RhodyBuy for Incident reporting and tracking, upgrading the Service Portal to a new Portal provided by ServiceNow with additional engagement features, retooling the Knowledge Article process to streamline and encourage more and faster knowledge article publications, implementing IT Asset Management and expanding Change Management use.

We look forward to working with the URI community as we continue to sustainably integrate business process fulfillment across the university!

The ServiceNow Support Team

Mike Motta
Jennifer Hidalgo
Tina Yetman
Jake Fonseca

As we conclude Fiscal Year 2024, the University of Rhode Island’s IT Contract Review team proudly reflects on a productive year. We meticulously reviewed over 288 IT contracts, ensuring alignment with state and university purchasing regulations, insurance requirements, and IT policies.

In November, the Vice President of Administration and Finance released updated guidelines clarifying the contract review and approval process. In response, the IT Contract Review site was updated to reflect this simplified process, making it more user-friendly and efficient.

We also launched a new resource for ITS faculty and staff looking to procure IT products by providing the long list of applications which have already been through a security review. This new resource allows IT owners to quickly identify vetted and approved products by IT security, streamlining the contract review process.

We welcomed Associate General Counsel Leah Zaborski as our new IT liaison in the Office of General Counsel (OGC). Additionally, we’ve collaborated with the Office of Enterprise Risk Management and their new IT liaison, Daniel Keating, to establish business rules and criteria that simplify the identification and reusability of IT insurance determinations and requirements.

This year, the IT Contract Manager has been working closely with the Strategic Procurement team on the rollout of RhodyBuy, our new eProcurement system powered by Jaggaer. RhodyBuy will centralize contract lifecycle management, offering enhanced visibility, tracking, and efficiency.

Looking ahead to FY 2025, we are eager to continue our efforts and collaborate with IT owners across the university to provide cutting-edge IT services and products. We are also focusing on onboarding AI and managing the new legal requirements tied to those contracts.

We hope everyone enjoys their summer and looks forward to another successful year!

Update

ITS is organizing a collaboration with key university organizations currently developing and using paper forms in both academic and administrative arenas as well as using different online tools to develop, route and record approvals of these online forms.

Goals –

  • Identify and agree to a common cloud service that will provide a platform for university colleges and departments, both administrative and academic, to migrate existing paper forms to the online service as well as establish new forms and use the online service to route and record digital approvals of the form.
  • Establish common digitized new Forms standards and approvals consistent with existing Faculty Senate and University procedures.
  • Establishing onboarding policies and procedures for any division, college or department that may want to purchase their own license for the system and use it in conjunction with other departments.

Background – To begin the process, ITS met with representatives from Enrollment Services, Human Resources, Budget and Financial Planning, Graduate Admissions, Controller’s Office, and Payroll to establish common understanding of needs, requirements, goals and objectives of this service. Graduate Admissions recently engaged an online service tool performing similar functionality and each of the departments listed, as well as others at URI that this group interacts with, were in the stage of considering various products.

July 2020 

  • Team established.
  • Initial meeting to establish scope, goals, objectives and requirements as well as discussion of options, timelines and resource allocation.
  • Graduate Admissions provided a demonstration of the product they have in use with discussion of usability, functionality and use within URI.
  • Next steps established.

August 2020 

  • Additional services reviewed online by the team with considerations of feasibility, pricing and URI Purchasing procedures as well as reaching out to other higher education institutions to determine if they have solutions in use, what those are and how they feel the service is working.
  • Additional online demonstrations.
  • Group decisions of plan, challenges, implementation, onboarding procedures and guidelines.
  • Development underway of onboarding procedures and guidelines.