ITB Meeting Minutes April 8, 1999

Guest: Stuart Lynn

Absent: Mark Aldenderfer, John Bruno, Alan Liu, Bob Sugar

Dorothy Chun chaired the meeting in Bob Sugar’s absence. She welcomed Stuart Lynn, Associate Vice President of Information Resources and Communications, UCOP, who had been invited here to provide information about directions other campuses are taking with IT and to discuss options for UCSB. Stuart said that information technology has grown from being primarily a tool for researchers to impacting all aspects of the business and academic process. In academics there is one support person for 100 knowledge workers. In business there is one support person for 40 knowledge workers. How one organizes isn’t going to solve the problem.

Outline of Stuart Lynn's Presentation

A discussion followed the presentation.

Jeff: What is the typical CIO’s background?

Stuart: This position is hard to fill.

• Not an active faculty member
• Many have been faculty members
• Needs to be someone who has had exposure to business and academics
• Management aspect not like other administrative academic positions
• It’s a career position
• Better to hire someone who doesn’t have tenure – will have a certain edge
• Needs to be someone who is involved in teaching or has been faculty, but must have a strong interest in business processes
• Needs to be someone the faculty are comfortable with

Jeff: In your description of campuses you tended to indicate if they were split or not. Can you categorize this as to whether the CIO is staff or line management?

Stuart: They are all line management positions. No campus has made it work as a staff position.

Jeff: In corporations they have staff.

Stuart: In corporations CIO’s have strong control over budgetary resources and strong line responsibilities.

Ron: Since half centralize and half don’t, do you think this is because it is hard to find one person to satisfy academic and business interests?

Stuart: History and culture influence this.

Ron: UCLA has an ITB. I am interested in this model.

Stuart: They have mixed opinions themselves. They come from mainframe-centric IT. There is tension within faculty as to what they want – it's not just the issue of business vs. academic. Yet, UCLA continues to accomplish great things.

Peter: On one hand, we shouldn’t be too concerned about organizational structure. The people are more important. Flexibility in structure seems to be key.

Stuart: Davis is looking to bring in a faculty member to the CIO position. Organization doesn’t solve all the problems. It isn’t THE solution. Consider resources, directions, people, and what you want to achieve to form the right degree of centralization or decentralization. Don’t bring in the wrong person.

Dorothy: Was Carol Barone a faculty member?

Stuart: Yes, she had a faculty background.

Dorothy: Was she successful?

Stuart: She gave up being a faculty member. It doesn’t have to have that background, but faculty members historically have not lasted very long.

Jennifer: How does this (CIO) take care of graduate and undergraduate students?

Stuart: Grads are considered with faculty. Undergrads get lost in the decentralized model regarding basic core services.

Ron: In the centralized model departmental labs aren’t under their purview.

Stuart: General open labs, yes. Specialized labs, no. But the people responsible for these must be brought together. How do you guarantee these labs are most efficient when they aren’t under central control or a common umbrella? General labs service a broader community than departmental labs. They have a harder time upgrading their technology, have security problems and are understaffed because there isn’t an overall focus.

Jeff: What is the trend for students having their own computer? Who is doing a good job of incorporating that phenomenon in our model for instruction?

Stuart: Santa Barbara is doing a good job. Some teachers choose to use the technology in their instruction. This doesn’t necessarily mean they become better because of the technology. Many of the simple tools like email have had more effect.

Jeff: What are some of the things we are not doing well? What would a CIO do to help us through our problems? The number of system administrators we all hire and supervise; the number that work inefficiently – our systems don’t work as well as they should. The CIO should be able to handle this. How do the students who have computers at home impact instruction, what we provide as a safety net for those who don’t have computers, whether we make ownership a requirement?

Stuart: Whether a computer would be eligible for Financial Aid, even if it qualified, won’t generate more Financial Aid. Schools that have required it haven’t been that successful. There’s no control over obsolescence. Computers are getting cheaper; they are replacing slide rules.

Jeff: If you have a computer, you have an ISP. If you have an ISP, you have email. Should UC or the ISP provide email?

Stuart: It means something to students to have ucsb.edu as their email address. Should we have our own modem pool? No. This is a $10/month cost. When we spend so much money on software, etc. – just give them a ucsb.edu alias and when they graduate, forward their email.

Jeff: There are things that a CIO can do and there is no one here that can make that decision at the UCSB level.

Stuart: Systems administrators are working at a disadvantage, in a vacuum, working on the wrong problems, have career issues. They shouldn’t be dealing with level 1 or level 2 connectivity. Central organizations should be maintaining the network to the wall plate. It should be a utility function. Certain issues are campus-wide; some are not. How do we deal with these changes? The ITB is a good way to deal with these issues. My ideal organization is to have a Policy Board that deals with policy issues and separate committees to deal with business information problems, teaching and research, infrastructure organization – where staff are brought together to deal with network security, training, support. Chairs of these committees would be on the ITB. Someone needs to develop institutional priorities.

Dorothy: What is the CIO’s power with relationship to the ITB?

Stuart: The policy board advises the CIO; no one can report to a committee. Someone who ignores advice from an organization like an ITB won’t last long, but you must have a CIO who will take risks to enable things. They have to maintain a balancing act. The CIO will also try to influence the ITB.

Elise: Regarding degree of centralization, in addition to networking at level 1 and level 2, are there any other functions that would benefit from centralization?

Stuart: No, but most desirable is the kind of centralization that gets people together to move in a direction. It’s not a simple question of centralization vs. decentralization. With the network you start at the lower layers; it’s easier. When you move up the layers, there are more difficult questions you are dealing with. There are add-on services like email and voice mail. Who advances IT in instruction – traditionally IT used in research is migrated to instruction.

Bill: Some of us felt the CIO would be an advocate for resources and support staff but this might be a way of imposing policy that would impede creativity. This is a fast changing field. You can’t really standardize. On the administrative side, you can standardize. The higher up the food chain, the more decentralized.

Ron: The board with a CIO would have to be listened to more carefully – the advocate reflecting the view of the board rather than the CIO going off on its own.

Stuart: Advocate for resources – resources are extraordinarily difficult. Make sure you have reconciliation between resources.

Bill: The "have's" and the "have not's"…

Ron: Any plans for resources flowing from Oakland?

Stuart: $6 million for instructional technology passed in permanent money.

Ron: The $1 million for online courses…

Stuart: No. $8 million is in the CAP, not included in the budget. We can’t hire staff on one-time money, but we can take the money.

Dorothy: What is the perception at UCOP of how UCSB stacks up against other campuses? Statistics show that, based on library, computers, and career staff, we are behind other campuses.

Stuart: It’s difficult to get comparative data. UCSB was behind in networking in residence halls and that has changed. UC-wide has 6% tech staff and UCSB has 4%. Santa Barbara is a distinguished research university. If you spent more on IT, it would be better. Santa Barbara business systems are some of the best.

Jeff: We get faster network connection last.

Stuart: Decisions that have taken Santa Barbara 2 years, other campuses made in 5 minutes. (CalREN2). Delegate this to someone and don’t waste time on this kind of decision. If there is a need for community involvement, let them work it out together. We couldn’t get the fiber to Santa Barbara. You now have as good a connection as any campus. Most campuses had this done long ago – maybe too many cooks stirring the pot.

Ron: In Stanford’s model, they gave faculty Macs and said, "thou shall use these." Faculty said "no way" and resources were wasted.

Stuart: That’s the wrong kind of centralized model and it was a bad decision.

Elise: If we implemented some centralized functions, any advice?

Stuart:

• It doesn’t have to happen overnight.
• Lay out strategic role, time, cultural issues.
• Pick areas that are really important for centralization and build on success stories.
• You may not be able to recruit CIO unless there is flexibility and backing of key people.
• Start with the network.

Jeff: What are typical CIO salaries?

Stuart: $300-$500K with stock options. CIO types in universities aren’t in it for the money; it’s the joy of working with students.

Dorothy: Our chancellor would have to make that decision to pay this kind of salary.

Ron: This would come out of our budget. The CIO has no direct control over the decentralized units.

Stuart: They will have some influence in this model. You should pick your issues.

Glenn: What do you see as the challenges and issues in streamlining business processes?

Stuart: Santa Barbara has done a good job of understanding who the customers are. The real customer is the faculty, student, and department. I’m not a strong advocate in investments campuses have made in PeopleSoft (huge enterprise) type systems. One has to do this very carefully.

Dave: Had I had $30 million I might have made the same mistake. I would have had to confer with a lot of people before I could do it.

The meeting was adjourned.