The mission of the Office of Information Technology and Communications (OITC) is to provide top quality, innovative, and reliable administrative and instructional technology support, services, and solutions for the university community to conduct administrative, academic, research, and student support operations in a most cost effective and efficient manner. Clark Atlanta University's areas of strategic focus include building and executing Institutional Accountability for Enrollment Management, building Institutional Capacity, aligning Learning, Knowledge/Discovery and Performance, improving and maintaining Financial Strength and Viability and embracing and providing Leadership in Community Development and Environmental Sustainability. To that end, Clark Atlanta University has and continues to implement a number of core business applications and technology services which are industry standards in the arena of Higher Education. The optimization of these applications and services will never be realized if the infrastructure platform these applications depend on suffers from reliability, performance, and availability problems.

Clark Atlanta University's Information Technology strategy supports these goals and provides the foundation on which the University can maintain, sustain, and grow business related functions relevant to teaching, learning, research, and administration. Execution of this strategy dictates the need for the Office of Information Technology & Communications to strengthen and optimize the underlying infrastructure, build on and expand its existing capacity, and implement additional technologies that are needed for the University to sustain academic and business functions, grow operations and implement ever emerging technologies. The institutionÕs current extensive technology architecture is outfitted for basic services such as access to local campus resources, e-mail, Internet access, wireless access, etc. However, to ensure the institution's continued and planned growth, upgrades are required that address reliability, extensibility, security, manageability, and accessibility. These objectives are designed to permit the institution to realize greater productivity, higher usage and improved collaboration due to a higher and more reliable availability of services. They would also meet the demands brought about by next-generation applications, changes in learning and student trends, and faculty demands. In short, they are crucial to attracting and retaining the best faculty, staff, and students.

An underlying requirement to ensure the confidentiality, security, integrity and recoverability of our critical information is integral to all IT projects undertaken and is yet another factor that must be considered and interwoven into all aspects of IT planning. Network accessibility, network security, data protection, and information security must form the foundation to all IT initiatives. Real-time system monitoring capabilities, vulnerability and probing assessments, and access to critical data (redundancy, back-up, recovery), are all critical and would otherwise make addressing productivity related issues pointless. Assessments have determined the need for continued expansion of network security with a specific focus on assessing network vulnerabilities and points of failure; installing, implementing and maintaining network software monitoring tools to proactively address problems; and implement changes necessary to support growing trends and technological threats.