Present: John Ajao, Lubomir Bojilov, David Bosso, Ted Cabeen, Michael Colee, Saturnino Doctor, Mark Dotson, Doug Drury, Matthew Dunham, Kirk Grier, Karl Heins, Tom Marazita, Aaron Martin, Mark McGilvray, Elise Meyer, Steve Miley, Alan Moses, Larry Murdock, Vince Nievares, Tom Putnam, Fuzzy Rogers, Jamie Sonsini, Andy Satomi, Glenn Schiferl, Jacik Smits, Chris Sneathen, Heidi Straub, Chas Thompson, Colin Thompson, Paul Weakliem.
Report on 2/27 ITB Meeting: Description of ID Management System
Presenter: Tom Putnam
(NB: The 2/27/09 ITB meeting culminated many months of discussion about IT priorities and resulted in funding recommendations for several projects/services.)
One of the items requesting funding was the ID Management system (IDM). The system is now in final testing in preparation to put the new Sun IDM software into production. We expect the new system will enable future capabilities and services. In particular, the new system is needed to enable UCSB participation in UCTrust.
The current core funding for the IDM development is $184K/year, whereas development and support costs totaled $330,000 this year; the balance of funds came from reserves and other IS&C projects. We have outsourced the development activity to Sun since we did not have in-house expertise. In the long run, we feel it is important to have someone in house who understands our business processes as well as the workings of the Sun IDM system.
At the IT Board meeting, a proposal was presented that included one additional FTE to provide in-house expertise. In addition, we have an agreement with UCLA to run the UCTrust servers for UCSB (at ~$55K/year) using directory information from our Sun IDM system. Finally, we expect an increase in activity at the ID helpdesk with UCTrust, so an increase in clerical help from .4 FTE to 1.0 FTE was included. The total annual cost to operate and administer the ID Management system in its current form is $491K/year.
The IT Board requested OIST to develop a funding model that would include the $491K of IDM costs with the other network and security costs currently paid through the RUAC fee and the telephone data network surcharge, and to allocate the cost to the campus in proportion to the number of FTEs. Such a proposal will be prepared for the Income and Recharge Committee and will include broad consultation with the campus.
The level of funding requested will allow UCTrust to be implemented. Otherwise it allows us to move off of the old unsupportable Netpoint system onto the widely used and supported Sun IDM system. The funding does not provide resources to develop other capabilities such as expanded affiliations and roles. However, the marginal cost to develop those capabilities in the future should be much less than with our old system.
Concerns raised about this issue:
- There needs to be a clearly defined service.
- There needs to be a process for determining what is universal.
- Has the longstanding request for delegated administration of roles been addressed? (No.)
Description of Student Information System Project
Presenter: Lubo Bojilov
The Student Information System (SIS) is one of the oldest systems still running on campus, with core systems being built on Software AG. In 2007 the EISPG recommended that something be done, and the choices were one, do nothing; two, purchase a vendor solution; and three, wait for Kuali SIS. Student Affairs hired a consultant to further analyze implementation options. This resulted in Option A, which would be an optimal/full implementation that included the following modules:
Admissions, Student Records & Registration, Financial Aid, Data Warehouse & Business Intelligence, Academic Advising, Student Portal, Recruitment, Graduate Division, and Student Billing.
The estimated cost for this implementation was $27M, but it could be more because of the complex way we do things.
The ITB asked the project stakeholders to come back with Option Bs where possible, which led to the scaled-back plan Option B, which included the following modules:
Admissions, Student Records & Registration, and Financial Aid.
The estimated cost for this implementation was $12M.
In January 2009 the Student Affairs Executive Committee decided that, to mitigate the risk presented by the current situation, it was a division priority to make a strategic investment in a new SIS. They developed an Option C with a minimized scope focused on mitigating risk and using a heavy internal resource commitment that included the following modules:
Admissions and Student Records & Registration.
To fund Option C, Student Affairs would internally reallocate resources and add to their required budget cut an additional division-wide cut. They are looking to the campus to match the initial out-of-pocket expenses. The ITB recommended that this proposal be funded.
There was a question about how much is the current and what would be the new cost for ongoing support of the SIS once it was implemented. The answer given was that the current support model is quite complicated, consists of many layers, and is dispersed among number of various organization’s resources; but very roughly it could be estimated at something like $1M/year in support. After implementing a new vendor system, the maintenance costs could decrease slightly, but the savings will be offset by adding more functionality.
Concerns raised about this issue:
- There is no money at the edge. Not that there isn’t money at the edge to fund this additional expense, but there isn’t enough money at the edge to fund current expenses.
- Anything we do is going to cause cuts to things that are important to someone else.
Approved RUAC Fee Increase from $11 to $13.50
Presenter: Elise Meyer
Background: In 2002 SB1386 became law, then IS-3 increased campus security responsibilities, and there were several large breaches at other UC campuses that all lead to an increasing security burden for the campus. In addition there was an audit of the OIT that called out the campus’s lack of a CISO.
The ITPG had many discussions about this issue. The decision was made that the first small step to address campus security issues were to hire a Chief Information Security Officer and an Information Security Analyst. These new positions were proposed to the ITB and approved. The ITB also recommended that these positions be funded by increasing the RUAC IP address fee. The ITPG considered this a bad idea because first, there was no extra money at the edge to fund this, and second, increasing the RUAC fee could encourage people to find ways to hide their IP addresses.
The OIST was directed to proceed with preparing a proposal to increase the fee and submit it to the Income and Recharge Committee. The proposal was submitted in June 2008. (NB: The initial proposal was prepared in June, but it actually wasn’t submitted until July 13, 2008.) It included raising the rate over three years to get to the full amount. The proposal was presented to the Income and Recharge Committee in September. The committee recommended that the first year increase be limited to a $2.50 increase, for a total of $13.50 per IP address. In March 2009, OIST received a memo specifying that the fee increase was approved effective January 1, 2009. Based on discussions with the Income and Recharge Committee, our understanding was that this new fee was to be charged for the current year’s RUAC IP address charge, i.e., the fiscal year 2009 billing which is based on a count of fiscal year 2008 IP addresses. "(NB: On 4/1/09 we received direction from Todd Lee's office that the mid-year approval of the $2.50 fee increase was to be implemented by an increase of $1.25 for the fiscal year 2009 billing.)
Concerns raised about this issue:
- Is it appropriate to bill a charge in one fiscal year based on a previous fiscal year’s usage?
- Units have budgeted for this charge at the old rate, so it isn’t fair/reasonable to change the rate three quarters of the way into the fiscal year.
- Both of the situations described above are exacerbated by the shift in the RUAC IP address billing from the beginning of the fiscal year to the end of the fiscal year.
Proposed FTE Fee
Presenter: Elise Meyer
When the RUAC IP Address fee increase proposal was presented to the Income and Recharge Committee, there was discussion about moving to another fee structure. There were previous efforts in the past, in which the the ITPG was involved, that looked at increasing the services covered and charging via a Communications User or FTE fee. Those efforts did not go very far because of the work involved in determining what services should be included. During the fall of 2008, the OIST looked at re-scoping this effort to developing an FTE fee that would replace the existing RUAC IP address fee, and the existing Data Network Surcharge fee. Over the course of the fall a series of spreadsheets were presented to the ITB detailing the impacts of changing the allocation of these charges to the campus. A spreadsheet was distributed to the group showing the each iteration.
The estimated annual cost to be recovered for the RUAC IP address fee is $330,669. This number is based on the actual number of IP addresses billed in FY 2008, plus the known number of Housing & Residential Services addresses being billed in FY 2009, all at the $13.50 rate.
The estimated annual cost to be recovered for the Data Network Surcharge is $415,694. This $6.50 fee is billed once a month for each business telephone line. The number of telephone lines used was based on an average number of telephone lines billed per month.
The total annual amount of existing charges to the campus is $746,363. It was proposed that the new fee structure charge the student residents a separate fee calculated to cover the existing IP address charge of $107,730. That means the remaining amount to be recovered via a replacement FTE fee is $638,633.
There were several iterations to come up with the 6,109 number of FTE. The final calculation was based on the actual hours worked and used the criteria used for UCLA’s TIF fee, which notably excludes the federal- and state-funded portion of a workstudy student. This fee would be charged for all FTE via a monthly charge to the sub-3 of the Location-Account-Fund that pays their salary. The annual fee calculated was $104.54.
Prior to the last ITB meeting, the unfunded portion of the IDM service was included as a cost to be recovered by the FTE fee. To recover an additional $307,000, the annual fee would be increased by an additional $50.25/year, for a total of $154.80/year. There was discussion during the ITB meeting that the full $491,000 cost should be recovered through the fee (and the existing $184,000 in core funds be "redistributed.") This increases the FTE fee by $80.38/year and makes the total cost $184.92/year or $15.41/month. The spreadsheet distributed at the ITPG meeting showed this final amount. The current proposal does not include recovering any of the IDM costs from the student residents.
The ITB recommended that an Income and Recharge Proposal be submitted for this FTE fee, and that it should include the IDM costs.
Q: When would this fee be implemented?
A: Our next step is to submit a proposal to the Income and Recharge Committee. Other campuses have spent at least a year on consultation; we cannot predict how long the Income and Recharge Committee would take with this. (NB: In the letter approving the RUAC fee increase, it indicated a desire to use a new type of rate by July 1, 2009.)
Q: Why was the existing $184,000 in core funding removed from funding the IDM service?
A: It was recommended at the ITB meeting. The essence of the reasoning was that the same funding formula would be applied to all of the costs since there was no reason to have the state subsidize the arbitrary amount of $184,000.
Q: How and when will campus consultation on this new rate occur? Department recharge units’ experience is that a summary of customer feedback on the proposed rate is included with the initial proposal.
A: We assume that consultation will occur after the proposal has been reviewed by the Income and Recharge Committee. That was our experience with the RUAC fee, and it made sense in that case since, before the Income and Recharge Committee Review, the proposal was to increase the rate to more than $13.50.
Q: Does your model include scalability? Given the budget situation, departments may need to reduce staffing, thus reducing the income from this fee.
A: No, we don’t believe we can produce a useful model on scalability of staffing. We don’t expect that an annual FTE charge of $184.92 will impact units' staffing plans.
Q: If I have multiple students working for my unit, will I be charged for all of them?
A: You will be charged on an FTE basis for the number of hours actually worked. If all of your student hours add up to 20 hours per week, you will be charged for 0.5 FTE for them.
Concerns raised about this issue:
- The ITPG should evaluate the collection of services (and their descriptions) included in this fee.
- It appears that not everyone is paying their fair share under the current fee structure.
The ITB recommendation to fund the top two IT priorities, Identity Management (IDM) and the Student Information System (SIS), was presented to the Chancellor’s Committee on Budget Strategy (CCBS) last week. SIS is to be funded by increasing the campus budget cut target by an additional $600,000 for next year’s budget, and IDM is to be funded via the new FTE fee. In addition, the CCBS asked the ITB to develop a plan to continue participation in the Kuali Financial Information System.
Concerns raised by this course of events:
- Is ITPG opinion being adequately represented to the ITB on issues where the current ITPG chair(s) are stakeholders?
- Are the academic units being adequately represented at the ITB?
- How are IT proposals getting on the ITB agenda?
It was noted that the ITB has been looking at a list of Major IT Investments for some time. The original cost of these investments was $54M. As the budget crisis deepened, stakeholders were asked to bring their Plan Bs, which produced a new total cost of $33.6M. Todd Lee made sure that the ITB was aware that every IT investment in one place was a budget cut somewhere else.
The list of Major IT Investments being considered by the ITB are:
- Student System
- Kuali Financial System
- North Hall Renovation
- Alumni/Donor Financial System
- Non-mainframe Virtual Infrastructure
- Core IT Security and Compliance
- Credit Card Gateway
- Identity Management
- Campus Help Desk Org and Tools
- DR/BCP Central Infrastructure
- Course Management System
Action Items
- OIST should send out the URL for the spreadsheet comparing UCSD, UCLA & UCR fee models (xls) that was developed in January 2007 for the ITLC.
- OIST will send out ecopies of the FTE fee impact analysis (xls) spreadsheet.
- OIST needs to distribute a list of the existing (RUAC & DNS) funded services and new (IDM) services to be funded by the FTE fee.
- Leadership of the ITPG will be on the next meeting’s agenda.
- The remaining 3 items from this meeting agenda will be deferred until next meeting:
- Update on L&S Technology Initiative Fee (Alan Moses)
- Overview & Status of UCSB Learning Center project (Mark McGilvray)
- Review of security incident reporting processes (Karl Heins)
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