A study of campus-wide IT spending and funding was recently completed.  Some of the findings:

• Expenditures grew steadily from 1998 until 2002-03.  Since 2003, expenditures have declined steadily.  Adjusting for inflation, current expenses are back at 1998 levels, a decline of 16%.
• Salaries have been holding nearly level when adjusted for inflation
• Expenditures on goods and services have declined steeply
  • Computer expenses dropped 43% since 1999
  • Telephone expenses dropped 79% since 1999
• Ratio of IT-staff to academic employees has held steady at 1:21.
• IT expenditures are 5.8% or total expenditures vs. Gartner education average 5.2%.
• IT staff levels are 5.2% of all employees vs. Gartner education average 4.4%
• Central IT expenses 2.5% of total operating cost vs. Educause median 3.4%
• Central IT expense per student $767 vs. Educause median $1,187 & mean $1,625

Conclusions: Total spending is not out of line, but central spending is much smaller then norms.  This creates a problem funding enterprise-wide projects.  Budget cuts beginning in 2003 have been accomplished by spending less on computers and phones.  Computers are remaining in service longer and longer.

In our January report, we mentioned that we were pursuing a student “lock in” fee for student IT needs (more wireless, more open access computers, and a course management system).  We needed 3,000 signatures to get the initiative on the ballot and only obtained 600.  Students voted a large increase in student activity fees last year, and they were worried about likely increases due to the State fiscal situation next year.  In addition, they thought they shouldn’t have to pay for infrastructure. 

We are now discussing course materials fees to cover some of these needs, particularly the course management system.

Our identity management upgrade project continues forward slowly. Full integration testing will begin in June, and we are hoping to move this to production before fall quarter starts. The entire identity infrastructure from the hardware up is being replaced with changed operating systems, ldap directory, proxy ldap, identity manager provisioning engine (new), replacement feeder streams (new), and replacement database repository for the data of record. Authorization will continue to be enabled through the deprecated Oblix Netpoint software that will be replaced with the Sun Access Manager software in a second phase during the fall.

The phase out of our VPS printing system is complete and all our remote printing is now handled by the UCOP VPS system.  IBM has begun the work to join our mainframe attached storage to the UCOP storage system.  We expect this work to be completed in June.

Following a positive feasibility study done by rSmart consultants, we have been working on a detailed project plan and cost estimates to replace our vintage 1990 General Ledger with Kuali.  We expect this plan to be presented to our Enterprise Information Systems Planning Group and subsequently to the IT Board over the next month.

The Kuali Financial System proposal expanded in its detail on this, the third pass, which was presented and accepted by the Enterprise Information Systems Planning Group. This will also be presented to the IT Board on June 6, 2008. Work on the project has recently involved a multi-campus collaboration with rSmart to create a security specification. The project group is also discussing the details of what an operational system might resemble in both usage and evolution.

As reported previously, the Enterprise Information Systems Planning Group has prepared a document describing the need for a new student information system (admissions, financial aid, records, etc.)  We have contracted with Exeter to assist with a high-level planning analysis that will provide a strategic assessment of solution options and costs for student information systems:

• Commercial-off-the-shelf solutions
• In-house development
• Maintain current state for a few years (hoping for more and better options)

The report from Exeter is expected by mid-June.

The Sakai and Moodle pilot project has decided to stabilize the offering within the current extent of the service’s usage. Discussion within the Academic IT Planning Group, Letters and Science, Instructional Computing and Instructional Development is now focusing on how best to put together additional funding so as to go beyond the currently stabilized services.

UC wide Data Center studies, in their various incarnations, have been the central focus since the last ITLC meeting. The technical work group (UCD, UCLA, UCSB, UCSC and Paul Weiss of UCOP) achieved their primary goals. Additional effort by this group went into proposing a Data Center PMO and first year’s budget. The current effort is the analysis of the UCOP issued RFP for determining the business propositions leading to a regional data center. It is expected that the winning vendor will require considerable campus support at each campus selected for analysis, with the other campuses contributing their internal analyses. There is also a follow through of the technical work group effort to determine the details of remote hosting in the various sites to be used for computing equipment surge space.

As part of the CENIC upgrade of the networking equipment in our switch room, we are phasing-in our second path to the CENIC backbone.  We are also planning to upgrade our campus connection to 10Gb/s and use the interface purchase as a test case for implementing the new Cisco purchasing tool on our campus. 

Our network staff is working with the College of Engineering to develop a design for guest access to campus wireless.  The idea is to allow the colleges to take responsibility for identifying their guests in an otherwise central authorization system.  We expect to have a prototype ready by July. 

Plans for the July 20-22 UCCSC are in the final stages.  48 presentations were selected for the conference.  Registration opened on April 23, and as of last Friday 5/23, 89 people are registered.  We expect 250-300 people.