EISPG Meeting Minutes

EISPG Meeting Minutes

Thursday March 17, 2010

Attendees: Brad Eden, Martin Raubal, Doug Drury, William McTague, Deborah Scott, Bruce Miller, Rolf Christoffersen, Arlene Allen, Tom Putnam, Lubo Bojilov, Eric Sonquist, Carol Houchens, Steven Velasco, Maureen Evans, Jim Corkill, Saturnino Doctor, Ben Price, Gale Morrison, Steve Kriz, Omer Blaes, Mary Nisbet.

0.  Review/approve minutes from February Meeting

1.  Administrative Services Financial Systems Investigation Team - Doug Drury

2.  IT Budget Investment needs prepared by Tom Putnam in 2008

3.  Continued discussion on 2009-10 EISPG report to the IT Board

0.  Following a correction to the spelling of Sonquist, the minutes were approved.

1.  Administrative Services Financial Systems Investigation Team - Doug Drury provided a document and overview of the Administrative Services Financial System Review project plan. A cross-campus team is being formed to visit UC Merced to review the UCLA financial system implementation there. The team will also visit UC Davis to review the current Kuali Financial System baseline. EISPG members on the team are: Doug Drury, Tom Putnam, William McTague, and Jim Corkill. Several new issues were raised by EISPG members, in addition to those raised in the December 2009 EISPG on this topic. Additional issues and questions raised include:

a.  Ask Merced academic departments what they use for “GUS” functionality for both State and Grant expenditures by academic departments. UCLA Financials or a “Shadow System”?

b.  Are we vulnerable to a later decision by UCLA to change or drop support for UCSB?

c.  What will be the impact on inter-operability with other UCSB systems?

d.  Will the UCLA system handle Extramural funds, receivables? What interface have they designed with the UCLA SunGard Advance development system, and will this be useful to us?

2.  IT Capital Planning Summary prepared by Tom Putnam in 2008 was reviewed. At that time, the notion that UCSB might float bonds to finance needed investments was being discussed Many assumptions made at that time are no longer valid. Budgets and staffing have decreased; steady state assumptions for operational increments are no longer true. The campus has made a preliminary attempt to set aside some annual IT investment funds; $1M/year that will be split between Administrative Services and Student Affairs.

3.  Continued discussion on 2009-10 EISPG report to the IT Board: We briefly discussed the 2005 ITPG report, which described the importance of funding the replacement of three Enterprise Information Systems: The Financial System, the Student Information System, and the Advancement Development system. IA has since spent their reserves to perform an upgrade to the Advance Development System. From 2006 to 2009, Administrative Services invested staff to the development of the Kuali FS project, but budget cutbacks halted this participation.

In 2009, Student Affairs kicked off a commercial software implementation with $3M campus funding and $3M SA funding, attempting to limit scope and thereby fit into the available budget(original request was $27M). However, it quickly became apparent that an SIS implementation was not accomplishable within this funding, especially when faced with staff reductions and furloughs, and the project was cancelled within 90 days. Additionally we discussed relevant current and new issues:

a.  Risk / Relevance factors: As we get closer to Mainframe lights out, the risk of failures due to lack of key staff positions increases. If this platform “collapses” it will be very costly to repair the damage. The biggest damage may be to our reputation as an institution.

b.  UCOP multi-campus efforts: Academic policies are very different from campus to campus, and the UC campus systems are not very flexible. We would like to have a flexible SIS, adaptable to academic policy changes. Financial policies are very similar across campuses. Therefore, a software-as-a-service model may be workable for financial systems, but it is not really feasible for an SIS.

c.  There have been recent hints at a financing opportunity again. Tom Putnam mentioned that we should be (shovel) ready with a plan in case that happens. Plan B Project plans are in the works for both Financial and Student Systems.

d.  Is donor funding an option? Eric’s opinion: Current donor pool is not willing to donate to a software system.

e.  ESIPG should work to revise the 2005 numbers with preliminary estimates for the April 16th IT Board meeting. Therefore, Admin Services and Student Affairs will research and prepare revised estimates and review it at the next EISPG, which will need to be before April 16th.