MINUTES OF THE E-BERKELEY STEERING COMMITTEE

Meeting of May 21, 2001
Chancellor's Conference Room - California Hall

Members present: Professor Yale Braunstein for Michael Frenklach, AVC Greg Brown, VC Beth Burnside, AVC Ron Coley, VC Ed Denton, EVC & Provost Paul Gray, Director Phyllis Hoffman, VC Jim Hyatt, Executive Director Helen Kelly, University Librarian Thomas Leonard, AVC Matthew Lyon, VP Christina Maslach, Dean Mary Ann Mason, AVC Jack McCredie, VC Horace Mitchell, Director Ralph Moon, Director Barbara Morgan, Dean Richard Newton.

Also attending: Michelle Grisham, Cisco Systems.

1. Approval of Minutes from April 23 Meeting and Introductions

Minutes were approved as distributed. EVC Paul Gray introduced Professor Yale Braunstein, SIMS, representing the Academic Senate Committee on Computing and Communications.

2. Announcements

a) E-Berkeley Program Manager. Helen Kelly announced that three candidates would be interviewed this week (there was an excellent pool of 31 people). Screening committee members are Jack McCredie, Ron Coley, Ruth Tringham, Barbara Morgan, Ann Jeffrey, and Helen Kelly.

b) E-Procurement. Ron Coley reported on the status of this initiative. KPMG consultants are studying UC systemwide requirements and implementation strategies; UC Berkeley was one of the campuses and labs interviewed. The study will be completed by the end of June and is likely to lead to a common understanding of e-Procurement and perhaps to systemwide or campus RFPs. Consultants are difficult to keep on course; they insist on using e-commerce models and need reminders that this is a higher education project.

c) E-Architecture. Ralph Moon stated that the proposed principles for the technical architecture for e-Berkeley were reviewed by the ITATF. An e-architecture working group has drafted "UC Berkeley E-Architecture Guidelines" for campus departments; this document, which includes a questionnaire for vendors, will be brought to the Steering Committee in July for review. The working group is helping UC Extension develop an RFP. The EBITF has asked the ITATF to help review proposed new e-Berkeley applications, beginning with Extensity (e-travel). AVC McCredie thought the recent meeting with the Extensity vendor was a good measure of the appropriateness of our guidelines.

d) UC Student Services. Barbara Morgan announced that UCOP has issued a student services initiative in parallel with "UC 2010 New Business Architecture." [The URL for "Future Vision: Student Services at the University of California" is: http://www.ucop.edu/regents/regmeet/may01/302attach.pdf.] AVC McCredie mentioned a draft systemwide technical architecture document which will be reviewed at this week's UC computing officers' meeting in Riverside.

3. Report from EBITF (E-Berkeley Implementation Task Force)

VC Hyatt presented a report of EBITF activities for Spring 2001 (handed out with today's meeting packet) and went over each item. He highlighted the interim "E-Berkeley Policies and Guidelines" document which will soon be ready for campus review. [URL is: http://socrates.berkeley.edu:7015/e-Berkeley.policy.html ]

4. Status of e-Berkeley Budget Requests

EVC Gray stated that the campus budget process culminated in last week's budget retreat. He referred to the handout "e-Berkeley Funding Recommendations Revised Cost Estimates," which shows about $4 million in highest-priority e-Berkeley requests, but there has been a great deal of discussion on how to reduce costs and stage the projects. It is likely that about $2 million will be available for e-Berkeley, although the decision still rests with the Chancellor. He said this process has been a great exercise in how a focused initiative can make things happen. VC Hyatt added that EVC Gray has contributed an additional $1/2 million to the e-Berkeley initiative and he hopes that other vice chancellors will contribute as well.

5. Communication with Campus

Attached to the meeting packet was a draft letter to Project Sponsors whose projects were not selected for funding through the e-Berkeley budget process. The letter was reviewed by the Steering Committee, and a suggestion was made to change the wording to indicate that departments can seek assistance from the Program Management Office before next year's budget process. EVC Gray asked Helen Kelly to revise the letter.

Barbara Morgan summarized several venues where E-Berkeley activities have received recent publicity (Berkeleyan, HR Links, Berkeley Computing & Communications). Events being held this month are "Berkeley's E-volving Student Systems," and "Monthly Dialogues with Staff: Changing Berkeley's Administrative Culture."

The E-Berkeley web site has now been posted, with a few changes from the prior version. The Chancellor's video is available; there is a new section for "breaking news." The web site will be announced on the Berkeley home page next week. It is not yet linked to the home page. The URL is: http://eberkeley.berkeley.edu

6. E-Learning Report from the Academic Senate Committee on Computing & Communications and the E-Learning Policy Committee

Professor Braunstein explained that the two committees had combined meetings over this past semester, meeting once per month to develop an initiative to "promote the creation and dissemination of e-learning creative works of UC Berkeley faculty." The report included in the meeting packet is a statement of the vision the two committees developed jointly. The issues addressed by the report are the result of discussion of both broad and specific questions such as incentives for production of e-learning materials, ownership issues, and faculty compensation. Braunstein stated that we need to build on Berkeley's unique strengths, and that infrastructure and content development need to work together. The intellectual vision for this initiative is currently titled "Berkeley Integrated Teaching and Learning." Content resources in many different forms are listed in this section of the report. The joint committees concluded that we need to build a "content portal" as a single point of access to available materials, and we need an integrated focus on support for faculty. [The report will be available on the new E-Berkeley Steering Committee web site, at: http://ebsc.berkeley.edu ]

Dean Newton remarked that he feels strongly about the issues, particularly with regard to giving faculty the support they need. He sees what MIT did in their OpenCourseWare initiative (discussed at the Council of Deans) as a way to raise funds, and asked whether there is a chance that we could do something similar. Professor Braunstein feels that there is an impressive amount of content Berkeley can offer, and there may be a chance. EVC Gray stated that the campus faces a choice between "business as usual" (laissez faire) and a "coordinated campus initiative" which would require a unified effort on the part of many units. AVC McCredie noted that there is a lot of foundation interest in this kind of vision and that we are doing something unusual in our coordinated academic and business initiative. Braunstein stated that there are a number of people on the faculty who would be quite interested in this project, and he also mentioned the opportunities that delivering services to UC Merced might provide.

EVC Gray asked whether the Steering Committee supports this initiative rather than "business as usual," and received an affirmative response. He stated that this would be a fund-raising exercise (probably directed at foundations), which needs to be handled through VC McQuade's office, and he volunteered to "go away and think" about what should be done.

7. Outline for e-Berkeley Management Plan

Helen Kelly presented an example E-Berkeley Management Plan Outline in a new format but still using the Net Readiness broad categories of Technology, Governance, Communications & Leadership, and Competency. She stated that the Program Office will develop a new plan setting specific milestones in each category, with names of the persons who will report back to this committee. Michele Grisham recommended that the new plan focus on how measurable goals (such as the ones we proposed in March) will be achieved. She also noted that this entire initiative is about continuous improvement, and there needs to be a way to see the next phase for each project (e.g. e-Grades is "done" but needs improvements). The management issues that need to be addressed may be different from project milestones - maybe we need two kinds of scorecards.

Dean Newton said we need a staffing plan for the campus. What should departments have in place? Who is going to make sure new tools are used effectively (more than "training")? How do we measure competency?

EVC Gray noted that the next meeting will focus more on the plan and defining next year's goals, since we should have budget decisions by then. It will also be important to discuss next year's budget process, incorporating lessons learned this year.

8. Additional Announcements

VC Maslach announced that Professor Phil Stark from Statistics will be the new Faculty Assistant for Educational Technology.

Dean Newton asked whether people were familiar with the new alumni system that VC McQuade is buying. He recommends it highly. The vendor's web site is: www.ealumni.com. The company offers a dozen modules and is working with many large universities. University Relations plans to license four of the modules, which will be available to all campus units .

With no further announcements, the meeting adjourned at 11:30 a.m.

Future meetings:

Wednesday, June 20, 2001, from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the Chancellor's Conference Room,
California Hall

Thursday, August 30, 2001, from 10 a.m. to 12 noon in the Chancellor's Conference Room,
California Hall

Email group: e-berkeley_steering@listlink.berkeley.edu
Please send corrections and comments to: Sheila Press, avc_asst@uclink.berkeley.edu