Don Tolliver handed out background information on consultants Ken Blythe, Senior Director, Administrative Information Systems at Pennsylvania State University and Jerry Nogy, CIO at the University of Toledo. The consultants were brought here to work with us on enhancing our production systems and to discuss desirable topics allowing the UCT to state what kind of governance structure is needed to provide advice to the University administration and to state what is and what is not working and what should we be doing.

After looking at the progress made in the NISS goals, recommendations and status, the consultants stated they wrote a synopsis and brief status report for each of the study’s recommendation. Based on these criteria, the consultants gave the review a C+.

The Council was asked for one or two accomplishments that could have come from the NISS Review focusing on additional and valuable contributions to the University. A reference was made to establishing a Technology Policy Advisory Committee to advise the Vice President of Business and Finance on policy matters, networking communications planning, standards and priorities. The status to this recommendation is; the University Council of Technology has been established. The status did not state whether this committee was effective or if anything has been accomplished.

It is felt that the UCT is not up and running as it should be and has not fully realized its potential for establishing what priorities are. There is a lack of coordination across units and a lack of resources coming from unclear priorities. Departments have set agendas but there is no clear coordination across departments explaining why and to what extent. This is why, when looking at the review, some things are done very well and others are not. It was suggested that project coordination and planning needs to occur on an annual or biannual basis and priorities need to be visited more much frequently.

The UCT was to operate as a clearinghouse to prioritize initiatives (as the NISS advocated) because the University has so many competing priorities, but it had not assumed that role. The previous plan people have been operating under did not mention or focus on technology so there was no institutional support causing decentralization.

The UCT has not achieved what the NISS study outlined and should participate more in priority setting. Priority setting was discussed, stating that it is hard and takes a lot of time but does create order. Resources are scarce and limited therefore it is better to spend a considerable amount of time thinking how to spend them, rather than about how you spent them. There needs to be a process informing people how and why issues are being addressed. For example if we say no, we need to explain why in a context that people will understand.

There was muddled reporting with no direct line of getting information to the Executive Officers. This issue has improved dramatically now that we have an interim CIO.

The budgeting process is not linked to the priorities the UCT sets. This process has been a top-down process where decisions were made and implemented and recommendations may or may not have been effective. A recommendation could be made, but because of the lack of this link, even though called a priority, it is really a recommendation. The most effective ones that got in were when topics were under discussion as whether or not to implement but those did not always link back.

The frequency of meetings is a concern. Some topics have been on the table for a year. They do however remain on the agenda until they are discussed and formally disposed of. The Responsible Use Policy is an example, it should have been read and decided whether it was a good idea and if not look at areas that need to be looked at. Progress on this particular item disappeared when Ilee did, but it is still on the agenda.

A way to get the Council in sync and get the priorities in order is to have an integrated technology plan laying the ground rules spelling everything out.

The ACS/NISS Study was a useful process and a marvelous step helping us to move forward in areas such as network client and faculty refresh.

An integrated plan is needed, followed by an annual process. This would not have to be as widespread and as deep as these two reports but should connect back to the strategic plan.

More of too little money is spent on Information Systems. There is a have and have not between administrative computing and academic computing with a trickle down effect for the academic departments, where the impact of the large dollar amount is not seen. Training is lacking for individuals in academic departments, who are least in the position to be knowledgeable but need it most, because there are on the front line with the students.

There are faculty who could be a benefit in advising the central administration on software issues even for administrative computing. This expertise has not been used and planning is done entirely by administrative computing.

Many feel that, in particular in the area of applications, new and increased expenditures are more important in actual delivery of service directly to the students rather than the auxiliary services. Although it is not directly within the charge, when the council considers things there are no particular bounds between direct services to students, faculty and auxiliary services. A number of these are auxiliary services to students and faculty on access to information. Part of the problem is not the SIS system but the security policy for student systems. Faculty are given information in hard copy but they cannot access on-line. It was stated that a program has been written that enables the end user, who has the right to the data, to go into MC Access and give them the data they want. The problem with this is that someone has to support the access and training.

If SIS were to be changed it would cause academic units a lot of reinventing with some being critical systems. Another issue comes with state or university policies, and whether the systems will implement those policies as they are updated. For example, the freshman forgiveness module had to be rewritten to implement our policy. Is it better to redo our policies to conform with the system or do you find a system that will implement the policies we have? When SIS was purchased we had the view that it should implement the existing policy. Should this be the case or not or should we have on the table the fact that the policies will have to be different to utilize the system without undue maintenance costs.

The consultants shared the recommendation they were going to make and that is stabilize SIS and stay with it. They did not think the SCT package was that bad and that it could be made functional and current, taking advantage of SCT support then to do something that is going to improve services built on top of it.

It was asked if the UCT could set those statements. It was stated that this group was the better group to do so, but it is difficult to make priorities in a large group. This council was formed to be a computing group to solve the University’s problems. If it remained a computing group that represented all the University, it should be the group that sets those directions.

Representation was discussed stating that there was always to be a majority of faculty verses other university personnel. It is currently 50/50.

There is a solution to the representation problem that says this is the body that makes decisions and distributes the decisions to the proper community of people. The process would be easier if you divide the committee specialists that are able to sort through the finer grain of what is going on. This UCT needs to be one that drives but doesn’t have to participate in every decision. There is a difference between saying that you have to have a committee that is balanced and representative of all and partake in every decision and a committee that ensures that process gets done and is done satisfactorily.

It would be difficult for this committee to do considerations of the issues involved but would be easy for this committee to get a list which has a paragraph from each subcommittee which makes recommendations, priorities they endorse or wider input as to what has been done. In a lot of ways the function of this committee is pointing out what has been done because someone has knowledge about it.

The size of the group is not a concern. Some people, because of their jobs know about certain things and need to be there. In their absence, this was true when SIS was considered for purchase some things came up later and caused rewriting. This maybe was the best choice at that time so we did it and we might do the same thing again. When we are committing major dollars to something the choice is to write something ourselves, buy it off the shelf or do something between those two. This is a very important decision before we make a commitment to one of those approaches.

There is a tradeoff between making changes to the operating systems in giving students and faculty access to information such as web request type access, and data warehouse information for analysis. The problem all universities face is that it needs to advance in permitting faculty and students access to information to view for analysis. The value of putting something on the web is that it is transforming. Web enabling allows customers to serve themselves. The problem universities face is that they need to advance their web agenda, data warehousing agenda and at that the same time deal with the monster, the computer system, in the back room, that is not doing what it is suppose to do, but doing things the way the world used to work.

The challenge is what to do with the monster and how to advance the agenda. If all your energies are spent feeding the monster you are not going to advance. The problem that needs to be dealt with is how to strike the right balance.

Buying a package solution but not advancing the agenda is false hope. If you go behind the curtain and talk to the people in the back room they will say they are worse off today than before they bought the package.

What is being dealt with right now is the disappointment of dealing with an integrated system with the investment already made. The question this committee needs to answer is do you spend good money on the bad or put more money on something else to replace it and be equally dissatisfied.

It was stated that the decision was not made by the NISS Study Commission, the decision came from the top that we would buy an integrated system that would work on the mainframe.

There are competing objectives and if a decision is made that SIS is intolerable and we need to get something else then you can forget about some of the other things that need to be done. The question then becomes, is it really that bad. This is what needs to be decided. A key issue is where are we today and where are we going. Why buy a package that doesn’t advance institutional objectives?

Ken Blythe described how in the 1980’s Penn State had a consultant come in and develop a wonderful design for all of their systems and develop a student system. They did an excellent job of design and a poor job of implementing the student system and this traumatized the executive leaders. Many millions of dollars were spent on that process with the conclusion of the executive leaders being that we could continue with the work already done in house and have a comprehensive software that serves our needs - this is the monster in the back room. The operating officers are happy that they have these capabilities and not unhappy about the services provided. We are at the position today that we need to web enable. We are facing the same issues except that we feel better about the monster in the back room.

It was stated that communication is a problem. If the members of the Kent community were more informed about pending issues that were being dealt with that progress would be much better. The UCT is a wonderful opportunity to do this informing and to make active recommendations. The CIO should utilize this committee as a mechanism for the critical missing thing "priorities".

In regards to SIS, a near term remedy needs to be identified as well as developing a long term migration strategy. Kent went through the pain of stabilizing what we have, why destabilize again and go with something new and at the same time also work toward web enabling. Touchnet Solution, a web course application, is part of SCT that has been put in place at Toledo and they love it and made people happy without spending a lot of money.

Kent has a dilemma because the future direction is uncertain. Because of the uncertainty of the future direction and the fact that we are still debating what to do with SIS, the options of thinking through how to exploit SIS are not there yet. When we get past what to do with SIS the options will be good. The objective is to build on what we have.