ITLC Meeting Feedback

Handout distributed by Arlene Allen at the ITPG meeting on February 28, 2005.

1. Research presentations spoke to the need for more IT in support of research than ever before. There was a consensus amongst the multiple speakers that UC had fallen behind, excepting our state networking initiative. Supercomputing without supercomputers, i.e. Grid, and visualization technologies had the focus. Campus budgets garnered the bulk of the concern. There was little speculation as to solutions other than multi-campus efforts being used to combine resources.

   The formation of a UC wide IT Committee under Provost Greenwood has been accepted and encouraged. Kris Hafner sees this group as one of perhaps several avenues for addressing the points made about UC IT. The drafted charge to the group, so far, is:

   • Examine and clarify the mission, focus, and strategic intent of the University of California for the next 20 years.
   • Identify a concise set of goals, objectives, strategies, and measures that will guide the University toward its chosen direction.
   • Focus and align University resources, initiatives, and the talent and energy of the leadership team to achieve those strategic goals and objectives.

   Regents Cost Reduction Initiative is covered as a separate item below.

   IT Strategic Sourcing will continue to gain more focus. There is a proposal out of Patrick Collins' office to dramatically increase the funding of this program. His office has a 6 month backlog of projects and a demonstrated savings of $30M since its inception. The new proposal's funding is being requested at the system wide level. The campuses agree that there is still a need for a local person who bridges between the contractual and financial work done and the technical guidance provided locally.

   The next UCCSC is in San Francisco on Aug 7-9, 2005. Campus coordinators, zealots and champions are requested. There will also be an emphasis given to security issues for those who would like to do presentations.

   Strategic Sourcing Director Stuart Davis is ramping up a new E-procurement strategy that he will engage campus business leaders, procurement managers and IT on. He is visiting UCSB on 3/8. He is also encouraging all campuses to move forward with the KST desktop procurement initiative that UCLA and Irvine have been using. Locally, we are discussing an attempt to do a quick first phase implementation to put in place before a general e-procurement is available.

2. Reminder: Review of ECP & IS-3 Revisions due April 30, 2005

   • http://www.ucop.edu/irc/policy/ecpupdate/
   • http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/policies/bfb/bfbis.html

3. Sun JES/I2 proposal. Bill Doering and I have continued to work with Sun on providing the (mostly) entire suite of software at a flat price. The JES salient points are that is is now based on the IPEDS faculty count, and works out to around $65K per year. It does not require Sun hardware and it does not restrict which operating systems are used. It also now includes the Waveset provisioning technology.

DECAF has placed the Espresso single sign-on environment into production. Currently there are three applications (Transfer of Funds, Transfer of Expense, and Purchase Order Repository) exposed in the environment. Espresso is intended to support applications targeting all UCSB affiliation groups (student, non-student, etc). We are currently evaluating participating requirements and approaches to common look and feel. Next actions include resolution of participation requirements and moving forward with additional member applications.

4. Regents Cost Cutting Initiative received considerable discussion ranging from the emotional "are they nuts…" to what strategies are most effective in response. Everyone believes that more IT investment is required – witness VCR summit comments. Strategic sourcing is considered the most likely "win" at a UC level. It has also been agreed to engage consulting partners for potential cost savings. The underlying tenor would seem to be about 90/10 in it being a good idea to find a third party that says we are efficient vs. we may actually get some savings areas pointed out to us. The most common observations revolved around the reality of commercial consulting groups, Gartner included, being unable to understand, and thus advise on, the nature of research university IT. A system wide survey was done on IT spend from a campus viewpoint. The results show that 20-25% of campus IT spend is corporate / central. McKinsey report tried to promote the notion of a 5-15% savings possibility. UCOP pointed out the last three years of budget cuts averaged to a 14.5% loss in central IT funding at the campuses. Realistic assessment of IT spending ranges show the most optimistic scenario as one of holding costs flat within an environment of inflating personnel and software charges and the increase in enrollments predicted. We are being encouraged to look at telecom and mutual inter-campus self-support as the next areas of examination.