UIC IT Infrastructure Brief
Project Brief
Role: As UIC’s IT Manager, my role was in leading the research, design, and implementation of our entire IT infrastructure. I leveraged my expertise as a Product Designer and Web Developer to create a strategic IT plan by identifying the 5 core verticals which comprise the organization’s value chain: Community Engagement, Productivity Services, UIC Devices, IT Administration, and HIPAA-Compliant Connectivity. After identifying the core verticals in UIC’s value chain, I created a concrete plan for implementation by identifying which technical solutions would provide the most efficient workflow for the organization’s value chain. Throughout the process of research, design, and implementation, I continued to support all staff members with technical support.
Team Size: I worked closely with the other UIC Staff and UIC CEO for a team total of 4-5 people.
Tools/Technologies Used: UIC’s IT Infrastructure is primarily powered by Apple hardware, leveraging Apple-as-a-platform, Google Workspace productivity services, Okta, Zendesk, and a 1gbp/s FiOS fiber connection to UIC’s cultural center. Additional core services leveraged include Asana, Slack, Adobe, Zoom, Hootsuite, Jamf, Apple Business Manager, and more.
Duration: The project was supported by a 3-year grant through the Administration for Native Americans (ANA) with results to be published in an upcoming congressional report.
Context
What prompted the need to build or revamp UIC’s IT infrastructure? As the first employee and non-founder at UIC, our infrastructure was limited when I first joined the team. To increase organizational productivity, efficiency, and community efficacy, a strong technical foundation was needed to support our remote-first team.
Describe the scope of UIC’s work and how the IT infrastructure needed to support these activities: As previously mentioned, I had identified the 5 core verticals which comprise the organization’s value chain: Community Engagement, Productivity Services, UIC Devices, IT Administration, and HIPAA-Compliant Connectivity. For UIC staff members, our IT infrastructure needed to empower staff to rapidly mobilize organizational data and resources (such as Google Drive assets, shared logins, or shared payment methods) to quickly resolve any issues which might arise when serving the community. For Urban Native community members, UIC’s IT infrastructure needed to provide a simple and straightforward way to connect with UIC staff to ask questions, access programming at the UIC cultural center, and view upcoming events.
Challenge
Key technical and organizational challenges: The key technical challenge was identifying modern, robust, and well-designed services suitable for a non-profit and community environment. The largest organizational challenge I faced was with the uptake and adoption of certain solution implementations, such as paperless email-list signups at events or the regular use of Zendesk. Organizational uptake of Zendesk proved to be one of the largest challenges in this project due to the comfort with existing workflows. I supported the improvement of Zendesk’s update and adoption through gentle reminders at team meetings, creating additional support documentation, and reiterating my continued availability for 1-1 support sessions.
Budget constraints, data management, and security concerns: As an Indigenous non-profit organization, budget constraints tend to be the largest challenge. Indigenous non-profits receive about 0.4% of all philanthropy dollars, making the intentional use of our funds essential. I leveraged non-profit support programs, discount tech-providers such as TechSoup, sales-tax exemptions, and economies of scale to build a world-class IT infrastructure system on a limited budget for UIC.
Solution / Process
Approach to building the IT infrastructure: My approach to building the IT infrastructure was to prioritize the adoption of solutions which were dead-simple to use, accelerated existing workflows, were reliable over time, and financially sustainable.
Systems or processes implemented: One key system I implemented was single sign-on (SSO) via Okta with 1Password compatibility. As a remote-first organization in the digital age, ensuring secure access to organizational logins is critical to ensuring all team members can access the essential tools to engage their work. UIC team members can log into their Okta account through their UIC Google account. When UIC team members are logged into their UIC email via a Chrome profile, logging into Okta is as simple as 1-click on the “Sign-in with Google” button, and their UIC logins are only 1 more click away. Shared logins which aren’t supported by Okta are securely shared through 1Password.
HIPAA Compliance: While UIC has not yet started offering direct services, I laid the groundwork for future HIPAA compliance by setting up a secure foundation. Okta can enforce VPN requirements when accessing certain services, ensuring secure remote access. Additionally, at UIC’s cultural center, the WiFi network is split into a public guest network and a private, locked network for handling PHI-related data, providing an additional layer of security for future HIPAA-compliant services.
Scalability and future-proofing: I ensured scalability by primarily controlling long-term costs — ultimately, a solution couldn’t be deployed and scaled in the organization if it was too expensive to run for an extended duration. Future-proofing was ensured by basing purchase decisions on what the organization would need long-term (such as 3 years from now), rather than trying to get the least-expensive option to meet current needs. For example, most of the organization’s MacBooks are 2021 M1 MacBook Pros with 32gb of RAM and 1TB SSD storage. Despite being 3 years old, these MacBooks are poised for at least 3 more years of service due to their speed, reliability, and capacity to keep up with UIC’s increasingly complex workload. Additionally, tools like Otter.ai ensure details, including action items, are automatically captured, while Asana supports the logging of action items to ensure they are completed on time and not forgotten or lost.
Results
Tangible outcomes: As a result of 3 years of building and improving UIC’s IT infrastructure, the team has increased its productivity by no longer needing to deal with insufficient computing power, excessive downtime, lost passwords, and disorganized communication. For example, our organization’s use of Apple-as-a-platform alongside the Google Workspace suite meant UIC was unaffected during the 2024 Microsoft-CrowdStrike outage while other teams were locked out of key services such as Microsoft Teams. As a result of our robust infrastructure, the organization is well-positioned to focus on expanding programming and project development now that basic workflow execution is no longer a top concern.
Support for specific programs like MMIP: A great example of how UIC’s infrastructure is supporting ongoing projects and programs is UIC’s AI Policy Analyzer. UIC created an MMIP policy tracker back in 2020, which sought to track all active MMIP legislation through a series of culturally tailored questions. Creating and updating the dataset for this project became a confusing and cumbersome process, which in turn became a significant roadblock for the continued progression of the project. With the support of UIC’s IT infrastructure, I created an AI Policy Analyzer which takes Legiscan links of MMIP legislation and processes the legislation with culturally tailored questions through ChatGPT. To learn more about UIC’s AI Policy Analyzer, check out the project brief or explore the tracker on UIC’s website here.
Learnings
Lessons learned: As a large 3-year project, building UIC’s IT infrastructure taught me a significant amount about managing relationships with team members, cost containment, project management, as well as how to manage multiple projects simultaneously. One key learning was balancing the demands of multiple sub-projects, such as the Zendesk implementation, Mobile Device Management (MDM) setup, and the organization’s transition to monitoring and evaluation systems. Coordinating these projects required a focus on prioritization and clear communication with the team to avoid disruption in daily workflows.
How these experiences influenced my approach: As a long-term project that has contributed greatly to my professional development, these experiences taught me how to work closely with team members who are hesitant about adopting new technologies and operating procedures, how to innovate on a tight budget, and how to implement a new system from the ground up.