10/13/97

This subcommittee is charged with formulating a multi-year plan for information systems to support the effective management of the University. Formation of this subcommittee also addresses a recommendation of the Information Architecture Project which is to have such a group monitor systems for compliance with their recommendations and continually evolve the information architecture as warranted by technical advances and University needs. This subcommittee will interact with other ITSC subcommittees and ECAC subcommittees and the Dean’s Council working groups as appropriate.

The members of the subcommittee are Jerry Cochran (Chair), Tony Frater (Graduate Student), J. Wesley Jamison, Bruno R. LaCaria, Sean O’Rourke, Robert F. Pack, Arthur G. Ramicone, and Susan L. Mesick (Support Staff).

The subcommittee meets as required to review and advise funded and proposed projects that affect the University’s Information System Architecture. In addition to the oversight team for each project, the subcommittee provides an alternate sounding board for project management and other project related issues. The subcommittee has received presentations on major projects and has met to address planning and funding issues.

This report provides the first installment of the continuing multi-year planning effort. It defines the current state of University information systems, gives checkpoints of current projects and provides a priority framework for future projects.

Projects underway include PRISM, a comprehensive replacement for the University’s financial systems, SOLARS, a replacement for the current student information system, Classroom scheduling and the second phase of the Space Management Project, the Year 2000 project, and the PittCard project to provide a wide variety of services to students, faculty and staff with a single new ID card. These projects will utilize the Oracle database and Sun hardware with the Solaris operating system, that were selected by teams that investigated available databases and hardware platforms.

The Year 2000 project is unique in that it provides no new functionality, but only enables current systems to operate beyond the year 2000. This project only addresses enterprise systems, while there are departmental and other functional area systems that will have to be addressed by those areas that operate these systems.

The University’s Information System Architecture will have to continually evolve to satisfy new user requirements and take advantage of emerging technological improvements in computing and communications systems. We will have to address state of the art information access technologies such as those introduced by the World Wide Web, that will make true client/server access economically feasible. This technology introduces other issues that will have to be addressed including securing our data while making it more accessable to authorized users. Increased accessability to data brings with it the need for more robust communications facilities that will accommodate the increased traffic, and the need for more support for the increased usage of the data and the increased number of users. Technological innovations not currently on the horizon will have to be incorporated into the information architecture within the next five years just as technologies not foreseen five years ago are being incorporated today. Data warehouse technology will have to be incorporated to satisfy the increasing demand for longitudinal and current activity analysis that is needed to more intelligently manage the University in these times of restricted budgets and growing competition.

With the significant changes to be brought about with the implementation of new information systems using new technologies, there will be many information policies and issues that will have to be addressed by the University administration, information system users and technical staff. New systems and new technologies require training at all levels within the University. How will we accommodate the number of people that need to be trained and do it in a timely manner? If students are to be given direct access to their own information, how will they be trained, and how will the information be secured? How will all of the systems, hardware, training and documentation be funded?

The alternative methods of funding for all of these efforts will have to be evaluated to insure that the most economical means of providing quality service is employed. Centralized funding versus decentralized (i.e. departmental budgets) is an issue that may have to be decided for each piece of hardware, software, infrastructure, and related costs for each new information system that is to be implemented. Should system administration, security administration and data administration of the new systems be decentralized or should central control continue for enterprise systems. One factor relating to this issue is the number of shadow systems that currently exist within the University. Obviously they are being funded and supported at the departmental level. Another factor affecting this issue is the natural economy of centralized control through the minimization of the number of technical experts needed to support all of the new information systems and communication networks. The current autonomy and geographical dispersion that currently exist will also have to be considered in these decisions. Naturally, the differences both of need and magnitude that exist at the regional campuses will influence all of these actions. The mandate for standards and open systems put forth by the Information Architecture Project will be an overriding factor in all of these decisions.

The Subcommittee recommends that training be centrally funded for supported software, site-licensed software costs for supported software should be centrally supported and the cost for servers should be centrally supported. However, costs for client equipment and network connections should be the responsibility of the individual units utilizing them.

Over the next five years varying stages of development and implementation will have to be supported for PRISM, SOLARS, Year 2000, Classroom Scheduling, PittCard, Space Management, NOTIS, Institutional Development, Human Resources and Payroll systems. The capital costs for these projects are estimated to be $6,100,000 for FY 1998 and $5,950,000 for FY 1999, excluding the cost for NOTIS, and PittCard. The estimated increase in operating cost for these projects is $740,000 in FY 1998, and $1,260,000 in FY 1999, excluding NOTIS and PittCard.