University Budget Committee

 

December 16, 2004

 

Regular Members in Attendance: Cal Christian, Henry Ferrell, Nancy House, Kathy Misulis, Ralph Scott

 

Ex-officio Members in Attendance: Maggie Capen, Joe Gaddis, Andrea Harrell, Rick Niswander, Bob Thompson

 

Others in Attendance: Jack Brinn, Lori Lee

 

Person Presiding: Henry Ferrell

 

Professor Ferrell called the meeting to order at 4:01 P.M.

 

Agenda Item #1: Without objection Professor Ferrell declared the minutes of the October 21st, 2004 meeting approved as submitted by the secretary.

 

Professor Ferrell reported briefly on the interviews of the Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance candidates. He noted that several members of the committee had the opportunity of meet the candidates. He noted that the search had been concluded and an appointment had been made.

 

Professor Ferrell next recognized Rick Niswander, as the Interim Vice Chancellor for Administration of Finance and Chief Information Officer.

 

Agenda Item#2: Professor Ferrell next recognized the Interim Associate Vice Chancellor for Information and Technology and Computing Services, Jack Brinn.

 

Interim Associate Vice Chancellor  Brinn presented the following report

 

Brinn noted that his unit has 175 employees most of whom are housed in the old Daily Reflector building on Cotanche Street. The Cotanche facility has around 31000 square feet but he was out of space when he moved in. Brinn invited members of the University Budget Committee to meet with him in the future to “tour the ITCS shop.” Other employees are located in the Austin Building and Joyner East (telephone system).

The Hardware Services ITCS section provides an IBM administrative mainframe that runs the university administrative and student systems. Other hardware includes 165 server boxes that provide email, clinical, OneStop, research and departmental web page services. Sun Solaris (Unix) boxes are in place to run the Banner system (integrated database management system). Hardware Services also provides around 13,500 network connection for staff and students. 62% of units have wireless covered based on university building square footage.  Brinn noted that he “would like to see all faculty have there current work stations replaced with wireless laptops.” He stated that a number of faculty in the Medical School had not had their computers replaced in a number of years and were still running work stations using the Microsoft NT operating system, which I no longer supported by Microsoft, and is a significant security risk for the university network and everyone on the network.

 

Professor Ferrell asked about the lack of wireless capability in areas in Joyner Library, especially in the faculty office he has. Interim Vice Chancellor Brinn replied that he would make a note of the issue and look into what could be done in increase coverage for faculty in the library.

 

Professor Scott asked when wireless would be extended to other major campus buildings such as the Jenkins Building and the Brewster Building.   Brinn replied that other buildings were scheduled to be rolled out in the future with the goal of having all major buildings on-line. The next buildings scheduled are the new buildings on the West Campus. Scott noted that with wireless networks having test operating ranges in excess of ten miles it would not nice to extend the range of the existing wireless beyond its present limited range.

 

Associate Vice Chancellor Brinn noted that his unit is held accountable through frequent audits, both internal and North Carolina. He noted that the failure of the ITCS to maintain CoBIT audit standards leaves the university at financial risk through the potential loss of budget flexibility. Internal auditors act at their own discretion, while NC auditors to a major audit every four years. The Chief Information Officer reports to the Vice Chancellor of Administration and Finance.

 

Some concerns/initiatives of the Interim CIO: equipment (blade technology), space, communication and responsiveness (will meet with all layers of management and appoint a specific staff member to coordinate unit modes), service contracts, internal reorganization, improved financial management and reporting, better budgeting process, UNIX support, academic internships (for students in Technology), open source software evaluation, and roll out of major projects.

 

Major projects currently being worked on are: Banner, Network upgrade/VoIP, Clinical systems, Academic, SCTF labs, Research IT. Current units running Banner are Finance (6.x), Campus Loan Manages, HR (6.x). Banner 7.x will be available December 2004 and Finance will go live with Banner 6.x on July 2005, with HR going live in January 2006. Migration to 7.x will begin for Finance in October 2005 and HR and Advancement in April 2006. Banner 8.x will be released in April 2006. January 2007 will see the completion of migration of HR and  Finance to 7.x. Student/FA and Advancement will go live with 7.x in July 2007.  Banner upgrade software costs are running around $18.7 million. We will need to make some decision regarding which version to upgrade to. The goal is to have one Unix (Oracle) database.

 

Network/VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is part of a UNC-GA baseline security compliance upgrade which gives ECU capital upgrade grants of $750,000 per year. Implementation of VoIP is currently on of year roll out which capital costs projected to be at $6.140 million. This CISCO based project will provide faculty, staff and administrators with desktop video teleconference capability.

 

Major Clinical (West campus) upgrades include IDX upgrades, Analyzer and firewall.  We are already seeing the fruits of the IDX (BSOM Patient management system) upgrade, with some 4400/8000 patients passed from BSOM to PCMH (UMS) with one interview in August of 2004. The Analyzer upgrade is essentially a data mining system for patient captured data. The clinical firewall upgrade is to comply with federal and state patient record confidentiality requirements.

 

Major Academic side projects are: Smart classroom support, smart classroom coordination (new renovation projects, support, refreshment), Technology Resource Center in August (TechRC), ACE Program and Support Center (for student laptops purchased through the Dowdy Students Stores), New Horizons Web Based Training, training and support in a variety of areas, statistical consulting, common spot training, Share Point (new virtual workspace tool for faculty/staff), relocation of Opscan for Placement Testing, increased communication on IT resources, Coordination of SCTF Labs.

 

SCTF (Student Computer Technology Fee) Computer Labs currently number 70 with 8 labs being general purpose and 62 specialty labs (such as the Kim Lab in Brewster). SCTF funds are used to buy paper, toner and hardware for all labs. These funds are also used to purchase software of curriculum specific labs for example: Maya, AutoCad, and Maple.

 

Major Research IT projects include: High Performance Computing, Network attached storage solutions for research labs. In put is received from the Research IT Committee. The High Performance Computing Center Interface (old MCNC Hetra Terminal) now called SGI350 currently costs $165,000 a year to run. This type of specialized applications currently runs around $60,000 a year each for four people. The question is how should this cost be allocated fairly and should it come from general computing funds or from funds allocated to the Division of Graduate Studies and Research?

 

Next the committee received from the CIO the ITCS Operating Budget:

 

SCTF     $1,847, 100

UNC

GA

TLT             315, 074

Webdev       308,431

Network      140,714

Other

campus

funds       3,404,712

__________________

Total $     6,016,031

 

SCTF is the Student Computer Technology Funds, TLT funds are for the SIITR (RaveWall in old Cafeteria), Webdev and Newark are upgrade funds from the UNC General Administration.

 

 

Interim Associate Vice Chancellor Brinn next presented the University Budget Committee with an organizational chart of ITCS as of 16 December 2004. Reporting directly to Brinn are the Directors of: Administrative Supports Services, IT Infrastructure, IT Finance and Planning, Network Services, Grants Administration, Security, IT Support Services, IT Software Development (ties in with Medical Director of Clinical Affairs).

 

Handouts received by the UBC from CIO Brinn included:

 

PowerPoint presentation “Faculty Senate Budget Committee Discussions”

ITCS Organizational Charts

ITCS Operating Budget {2004-2005}

 

The CIO noted that that it is hoped the SITTR system would “go away” to be replaced by a faculty desk top virtual reality system.

 

Professor Ferrell asked about the division of funds between the East and West Campuses? West Campus funding is around $2.5 million and is included in the other campus fund figures.

 

Professor Ferrell asked if there was any duplication of computing services on the East and West Campus. CIO Brinn replied that an extensive revision was made of the West campus ITCS following Hurricane Floyd in 1999. As a result of losing power in Floyd there was a major crash of West Campus ITCS systems which were basically maxed out and outdated. All ITCS services on the West campus were upgraded and merged with East campus counterparts in 1999-2000. Ferrell asked if there was currently any overlapped services, Brinn replied that there was no overlap  in what was offered on the East/West Campuses.

 

Professor Capen asked about HIPA compliance and who was absorbing these additional costs, Federal,  ECU or the State of North Carolina fund?. CIO Brinn responded that there

were no federal funds provided as HIPA compliance costs were basically an unfunded mandate that was dumped on the states. He noted that ECU would want to comply with HIPA regulations anyway since these regulations represent “Best Practices” that we would want to follow.

 

Professor Ferrell remarked on the short of life of computer systems and the need for frequently upgrades and operating system changes. He stated that in many ways the old Apple computer system Brinn had helped him with in the past could still supply what software he needed in terms of word processing and web access. Brinn agreed with Ferrell on this issue, but noted that many upgrades are security related. Brinn noted that he does not like top down technology changes and would like to see more choices available with regard to technology decisions (not just Windows based systems). He also noted that he would like to see more system integration with Banner and the morphing of new office projects with the Banner Oracle database interface.

 

Professor Ferrell thanked CIO Brinn for the valuable information he has presented the committee this afternoon. Ferrell asked that Brinn make a similar presentation  to the Faculty Senate, so that Senators who have questions from Faculty in their unit make ask them of the CIO.

 

Noting the late hour, Chair Ferrell asked if there were any objections to carrying over Agenda Item #2 to the January 2005 meeting. There were no objections from the members present.

 

Action taken:

 

1. Approved Minutes of October 2004 meeting

2. Received report from Interim Associate Vice Chancellor and CIO Brinn

3. Postponed Agenda Item #2 (Report from Bob Thompson on budget enrollment change projections for the next two years and space needs) until January 2005 meeting.

 

Agenda Items for January 2005 meeting:

1. Approval of December 2004 minutes

2. Report from Bob Thompson on budget enrollment change projects and space needs.

 

Chair Ferrell wished members a good Holiday Season and adjourned the meeting at 5:04 P.M.

 

Respectfully submitted:

Ralph Scott, Secretary