University of California, Berkeley
MINUTES OF THE E -BERKELEY STEERING COMMITTEE
Meeting of October 7, 2004
Chancellor's Conference Room, California Hall
Members present: EVC and Provost Paul Gray, Chair, AVC Ron Coley, Director Jon Conhaim, VC Ed Denton, Director Helen Diggs for VC Beth Burnside, Acting Controller John Ellis, Professor Ken Goldberg, Joseph Hall, Graduate Student Representative, Michael Heinrich, ASUC Student Representative, Dean Ralph Hexter, Director Phyllis Hoffman, Assoc. Dean George Johnson for Dean Richard Newton, Acting VC Steve Lustig, Director Ralph Moon for University Librarian Tom Leonard, VC Christina Maslach, AVC Jack McCredie, Chief Technology Officer Tessa Michaels, AVC David Moers, Director Jeff Reimer for Dean Mary Ann Mason, Director JR Schulden, Professor Philip Stark .
Also attending : Katherine Mitchell, COrE, Professor Merrill Shanks, CSM - IST, Director Faye Fields and Manager Joe Knowles, Financial Services
1. Welcome, introduction of new members, and review of minutes
Paul Gray started the meeting with introductions around the table, and welcomed those attending for the first time. Paul remarked that the steering committee has had a substantial influence on campus during the past four years. He said during this difficult budgetary period it is even more important to find ways to use technology to do things more efficiently. Paul read excerpts from the steering committee Charter, to be found on the steering committee web site at http://ebsc.berkeley.edu and said he still likes the statements of purpose:
The minutes were approved as submitted.
2. The e-Berkeley Initiative
Christina Maslach explained that in taking on the role Jim Hyatt formerly held with the steering committee she looked at where the committee stands and how it functions to assess whether there is a need to refine its direction and goals. She said that at the same time Jack McCredie has been leading the IT Strategic Planning process, and has noted that there seem to be overlapping functions among some IT-related campus committees, such as ASSCS and EBITF. These observations and interests have led to discussions with committees about their primary focus, the major distinctions between groups and whether there are gaps that need to be covered. A proposal for revisions to e-Berkeley Committee Governance has been developed, which Christina outlined in a handout for discussion at today's meeting. She said this meant some possible changes for the role of the steering committee, in that it may become more proactive in charting the IT direction for the committees and units working on the projects. Christina added that these committees have said it would be helpful to have guidance from the steering committee on the priority of projects. The proposed revisions were summarized as follows:
EBSC would be responsible for exploring the strategic issues for the e-Berkeley Program and make the final strategic decisions about projects and policies to implement. It would also assign issues for other e-Berkeley committees to investigate, including the: ETC, ASSCS, ITAC, Campus Information Security Committee, and Data Stewardship Council.
ETC, ASSCS, ITAC, Campus Information Security Committee, and Data Stewardship Council would also continue to propose strategic recommendations to the EBSC that were initiated by its own members.
ETC would make strategic recommendations about projects and policies that involve the use of information technology to improve teaching and learning on campus.
ASSCS would make strategic recommendations about projects and policies that involve the use of information technology to improve campus business practices including the use of both administrative and student service systems.ITAC would make strategic recommendations about projects and policies to improve the campus information technology architecture.
Campus Information Security Committee (CISC) would make strategic recommendations about projects and policies to improve the security of the campus information technology architecture.
Data Stewardship Council would make strategic recommendations about projects and policies to improve the management of campus data including the security and sharing of campus data.
EBITF would oversee the implementation of the projects that the EBSC has approved. It would make recommendations about changes to the current or proposed IT policies and strategic principles based upon its experiences with current and past projects. It would work with the other e-Berkeley committees to create standards and best practices that would help improve the success of future e-Berkeley project implementations.
Christina said the greatest functional change was to the EBITF, whose members felt their function could focus on strategic principle implementation. She referred to the organization chart prepared to show these possible revisions, which illustrates committee functions under the EBSC, with Strategic Planning Recommendations committees lined up on the left of the chart, and EBITF on the right as Project Implementation Oversight, with examples of projects listed below, including steering committees for each.
Jack McCredie said he would like to get a discussion going about these changes; the committee structure as it is just grew, and with Jim Hyatt's departure it seems appropriate to look at committee functions. Jack said that he sees a leadership role for e-Berkeley Steering Committee, and thinks the committee should be able to identify important issues and give direction rather than hear reports on projects that could be addressed by smaller groups. Jack cited the Strategic Planning process as an example of the kind of large overview of technology on campus that could be adopted by the steering committee.
EBITF would be charged with following the status of the projects on a more detailed level, avoiding the repetition of regular status reports at steering committee meetings. Recently, for example, the Data Stewardship Council gave presentations to many campus groups on the draft policy on Data Management and Use, which many people had previously heard at other meetings. The steering committee would be provided a more general update of overall progress in order to make decisions and perform other high level responsibilities.
Jack asked for thoughts on this proposed change in the role of the steering committee. Phyllis Hoffman questioned whether the scope of responsibility would be broader than the e-Berkeley Program. Jack said that the scope would not change; Paul responded by quoting from the Charter "The e-Berkeley Steering Committee provides overall leadership for campus information technology policy and for the e-Berkeley initiative," and said that the e-Berkeley initiative has evolved over the past four years to include the process of reviewing projects for funding brought to the steering committee by the e-Berkeley Program Office. Christina noted that the language of the Charter is outdated and needs to be revisited. Paul read the list of responsibilities stated in the Charter, available at http://ebsc.berkeley.edu/Charter3.2.htm
Ron Coley said he likes the proposed structure, though he does question whether the steering committee will be informed enough to be able to make decisions about projects if EBITF takes on the oversight role. Jack responded that this is a good question, and it is important to decide how to make the best use of the steering committee's two 2-hour meetings per semester. Ron said he sees that the committee could take a "Board of Directors" type function, operating at a sophisticated level on the basis of being informed. Ralph Moon suggested a subset of the committee which would provide information in advance of the meetings. Katherine Mitchell said she sees this discussion as a "tune-up" to keep the group going until it is time for the 50,000 mile checkup; Jack agreed that for the present there should be a combination of formal project briefing and decision-making. Paul said he believed a near term solution would be to have a small group work on agenda-setting for the steering committee, keeping in mind the issues that people are really interested in.
Information Technology Strategic Planning
Jack McCredie said that since the last steering committee meeting in June, several committees have continued to work on the IT Strategic Plan, Katherine Mitchell has continued to coordinate the process and a report will be presented at a future meeting. In relation to this, a survey was developed by Professor Merrill Shanks, Director of the Social Science Computing Laboratory and the Computer Assisted Survey Methods program, working in collaboration with Ken Goldberg, former Chair of COMP (Academic Senate Committee on Computing and Communication), and COMP members. Ken said that the survey was done in order to collect data on the status of computing in departments, and thanked Merrill for his contribution.
Merrill presented a status report and handed out a summary of survey results, saying that the data represents slightly over 50% of the department chairs surveyed. He noted that the accuracy of the data will need to be balanced by further interviews, and he promised a final report later in the fall. Merrill said that current results suggest that faculty members' use of computing in their academic work is very close to 100%, and that faculty access to the network is nearly universal.
Current results also show that support for faculty computing is distributed unevenly, with some departments having no in-house computer-related assistance, and others having a bare minimum. Funding for faculty hardware and software also differs widely among departments, and faculty are expected to provide their own desktops in many cases. Departmental policies about computer acquisition or software upgrades are unlikely to be implemented without adequate funding for hardware or software. Merrill said it appears that decentralized funding for computing has left some holes, and he is certain that COMP and the steering committee will spend some time this year deciding how to approach these problems. A brief discussion was held regarding whether requiring a standardized platform with support provided would offer a solution. Jack mentioned that problem of computing variability across departments exists at all UC campuses; for example, UC Santa Cruz has moved forward with a standard base level of computing service so that all departments have the same support. Jack said UCSC did not save money, but they believed that the cost of getting everyone to the same level was worth more than saving money.
Ralph Hexter added that the issue of centralized vs. de-centralized funding needs to be discussed. He said that about five years ago there was a Senate report on the lack of funding for computing, and that money was allocated to Deans to start a pattern of hardware replacement. The funding stopped after two years, and the situation has deteriorated. Jack replied that the Commission on Academic Computing presented the report in 1998, led by Calvin Moore, and approximately $1.2 million permanent money was allocated by the Provost for departmental computing. Jack said that it is not clear what happened to this funding; Paul Gray responded that it would be tracked. Jack concluded by saying that anyone who would like to see the draft survey report should contact Merrill.
Planning for Open Source
Jack said that UC Berkeley has a wonderful history of contributing to the open source environment; for example, the Unix DSD distribution, one of the original early sorts of open source activities. Currently, campus is working on several fronts to participate in open source; the most familiar is the Sakai project, funded by four major universities, Stanford, Michigan, Indiana and MIT, and a set of educational partners. Mara Hancock was recently invited to join the board representing the educational partners, along with the other four universities and the Carnegie Mellon Foundation. This is an ongoing collaborative effort to create an open source course management system, and Berkeley is an active contributor. UC Berkeley is also contributing the Chandler Westwood project, to develop a new calendaring and personal information management system.
Jack asked whether open source personal productivity should be encouraged, rather than using licensed software? He said a major issue is licensing software developed by UC Berkeley; to restructure the way we handle these resources so that Berkeley can contribute to the open source environment. Jack thinks the steering committee should consider this. Jack said that the Educause Review publishes many articles on topics such as this, and that anyone who would like to receive this publication should contact Sheila Press (spress@berkeley.edu) to be added to the subscription list.
Update from Financial Services
Faye Fields, Director of Financial Services Administration, and Joe Knowles Travel Manager, presented an update on Financial Services IT systems for travel and entertainment reimbursement, payroll, and student electronic fund transfer.
Faye said that during the past 6-8 months the new travel reimbursement system has been implemented successfully. The turnaround time for reimbursement processing has been reduced from about 15 days to about 3 days. In addition, the rate of rejection has been reduced to 15, and training has been instituted to address the most common errors made by those submitting travel vouchers. Future goals are to reduce the campus error rate to less than 10%, to integrate travel advances into the system, to integrate the corporate card with the travel system and initiate direct pay, and to create and implement web-based training on the system. ASD and the e-Berkeley Program office are now planning web-based training, and Jon Conhaim added that ASD is testing a Macromedia product at this time. Paul Gray asked for facts on travel processing, and Joe said the average is twelve business days from start to finish. Faye said that they have moved from complaints to compliments over the past few years.
Faye continued with the Online Payroll Time Reporting System (OPTRS), which has been in pilot phase using Virtual Private Network (VPN) to provide protection for payroll data. Training across campus will be completed by the end of January 2005. The system will eliminate paper submission of positive time activity, provide a means to report leave accrual, and establish a secure transmission of payroll data with a VPN setup on each PPS user desktop. Departments will need to assign OPTRS roles to staff members to separate duties, provide a confidential work environment with secure storage for assigned staff, and arrange installation of the software. The many advantages to departments using OPTRS will include timely recording of payroll data, and Post Audit Notification (PAN) review of transactions. The anticipated OPTRS roll out date is January 2005, since over 60% of departments have been trained during the past year.
The Financial Leave Accrual Program was implemented in July of this year, and OPTRS will enhance this process, as well. Departmental chartstrings are charged for the salary and benefits associated with the employee's monthly vacation leave accrual; OPTRS will eliminate manual tracking of vacation accrual and usage, and streamline contract and grant reporting. UCOP has mandated that all fund sources and all eligible employees' vacation liability is reported accurately.
Faye reported that 13,000 students have signed on to the EFT program, which eliminates standing in long lines at the Cashier's Office for student aid and CARS refunds. An interactive web site at http://eftstudent.berkeley.edu provides a way to authorize, revise or cancel transactions. The EFT site interfaces with BFS, and reduces staff time spent doing data entry. The option to receive a paper check is still open for those who prefer it.
Faye also presented the "eBill" and "eCheck" system, with features, which will significantly reduce, cost and risk of paper checks and payments for students and parents/payers. The contract will be finalized this fall with the vendor; SallieMae; a pilot program and testing will be conducted with students. The system will be introduced to all students in Spring 2005. Faye handed out a sample billing statement.
Paul congratulated Faye on these successful programs, particularly in the area of travel reimbursement - an old problem that has now been solved.
Announcements
• Unified Messaging (phase 1): Jack McCredie deferred this topic to a future meeting, due to lack of time.
• UHS Connect: University Health Services rolled out a new practice management system, which will change into an electronic medical records system in the next few years. $100,000 in transactions per year are currently being handled, 98,000 insurance claims are billed. This will move the department in the right direction, even though this is a major project.
• BFS Upgrade: The BFS upgrade is scheduled for April 2005. Jack reported that the project is still on schedule and on budget, with the steering committee monitoring all milestones carefully. Paul asked Jack to comment on the possibility that Oracle may purchase PeopleSoft; Jack said that PeopleSoft is open to other offers, and that most of those who are watching the situation feel that the software will continue on since most PeopleSoft users are large organizations.
• E-Berkeley Brochure: Jon Conhaim presented the new annual report of activities, "e-Berkeley e-Volution 2003-04," and asked steering committee members to review it. 1,000 copies will be mailed out on Friday.
• E-Berkeley Symposium: Jon Conhaim handed out an Executive Summary: 2005 e-Berkeley Symposium Faculty Interviews, outlining the findings from the interviews held during the Summer 2004, "to identify key themes, issues and concerns related to the topic "Teaching and Learning in the Information Age." A list of interviewees was attached, and the interview protocols. The symposium will be held on Tuesday, April 12, 2005, at the Clark Kerr Conference Center. A steering committee has been formed. A second symposium is scheduled for late March 2005, on "Scholarly Communications", focusing on the issues associated with producing scholarly research and publishing.
• Effective Sponsorship Workshop: Jon also proposed a two-hour project sponsorship workshop for e-Berkeley Steering Committee members, with the goal of informing sponsors of IT projects of the most important principles and best practices needed for effective project sponsorship. Jon handed out an outline of the workshop goals and structure, and asked interested parties to contact him at conhaim@berkeley.edu . Alex Walton who has taught the Berkeley Effective Project Management Workshop would lead the workshop.
The meeting was adjourned at noon.
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Next Meetings
Tuesday, November 23, from 2 p.m. - 4 p.m., 110 South Hall
