Our Initiatives

Network Refresh Project

Project Overview

Starting in the spring of 2026, Georgetown University is undergoing a major network refreshment project across the Hilltop and Capitol Campuses. Georgetown’s enterprise network comprises 72 buildings, 92 townhomes, and various outdoor locations. Replacing network equipment on a regular cycle – approximately every six years ensures that our GU community has high-performance Wi-Fi and internet services.

Georgetown University Information Services (UIS), in cooperation with Planning & Facilities Management (PFM), plans to upgrade this infrastructure in six phases (i.e., groups of individual buildings) over the coming years. We will start with a single group of twelve buildings, referred to as “Building Group 1”, which are all located on Hilltop Campus. Work is planned for these buildings in four sub-groups as indicated below:

Timeline

UIS is currently finalizing the schedule for the Group 1 kickoff and completion and will communicate this information to impacted building occupants (and on this webpage) as soon as it is available.

Impacts

Cabling Work
The project will include replacing network cabling and wireless access points throughout the buildings. This means workers will need to enter many common-use areas to replace that equipment. Workers may be in these spaces for several hours at a time to ensure the work is completed correctly. Wireless access will not be impacted during cabling work, but there will be building-wide impacts during network cutover dates.

UIS is coordinating access to common spaces with building stakeholders and PFM to minimize disruption to daily routines. Advance notice will be provided to building occupants ahead of impacts. External contractors will wear clothing clearly indicating their role in this project and will be accompanied by a member of UIS staff at all times

Network Cutovers
Each building will have a network cutover after the cabling work is complete. The cutover process will shut down the entire impacted building’s network temporarily, and the goal is to minimize impacts by restoring services as quickly as possible. Smaller buildings will have services restored more quickly; larger buildings will take the better part of a day to restore service. Occupants will be informed in advance of the cutovers so that they can plan accordingly for these network outages.

Questions

Any questions or concerns should be directed to help@georgetown.edu.

Portfolio Management Project

Beginning in summer 2020, UIS (the Office of the CIO) developed a process for submitting, reviewing, tracking, and managing IT projects. The process was developed in order to:

• Promote equity and transparency among our stakeholders by employing the same selection criteria and review procedure across all submissions.
• Ensure agreed upon project outcomes and success criteria.
• Define roles and responsibilities of all involved parties.
• Develop an “intake” process for submitting proposed projects in order to establish requirements (e.g., executive sponsorship, funding, sufficient resources from requester) for successful review of the proposal.
• Properly evaluate and approve projects—determine the impact of projects to the university community and to the university’s computing infrastructure, and whether the proposed project is aligned with university business needs and objectives.
• Develop a method for UIS leadership to set priorities for new work (e.g., “fast track” urgent IT work) and review requests for new work, as well as to communicate this roadmap to stakeholders.
• Track and manage projects, as well as the resources needed for each project, in the IT project portfolio, using an Integrated Master Schedule.

GU360 (Georgetown-Salesforce Partnership)

GU360 is Georgetown’s implementation of the state-of-the-art Salesforce platform, which is the leading Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) system. The goal of GU360 is to build a “connected campus”, providing the campus community with a “360 degree-view” of what’s happening at Georgetown.

The GU360 project is a multi-year effort that has involved partnering closely with many departments and individuals to discuss how GU360 can meet their needs.

GU360 is currently comprised of the following:

• Hoya360. Student-focussed portal that enables students to engage with fellow students, faculty members, deans, academic advisors, and others both within and outside Georgetown. Hoya360 also enables faculty members, deans, and academic advisors to more fully engage with their students. 

• GUFaculty360. Portal for faculty members to create profiles, share academic work and research with colleagues, 

Google Cloud Platform (Georgetown-Google Partnership)

This is a significant strategic partnership between Georgetown and Google that will provide Google technology services to the university. Georgetown is among the first (if not the first) higher education institution to enter into such an agreement with Google, who is new to the higher education environment. 

Google provide additional training (GCP, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence), products, services, engineering expertise, and a discount for using GCP (57% discount).

Among the goals of this partnership is to create a state-of-the-art, high-performance computing platform to advance cutting-edge research at Georgetown, enable Georgetown to be an innovator in the adoption of emerging and developing technologies such as machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and accelerate the university’s move to “the cloud” with such services as Google Cloud Platform (GCP).