December 15, 2008

President Wilson convened the Strategic Planning and Budgeting Committee at 12:10 p.m. The notes from the SPBC meetings of November 24, 2008 and December 1, 2008 were accepted as presented.

I. Information Technology

Beth Cunningham began the information technology conversation by presenting a summary of the report provided by Gene Spencer, an external consultant who was asked to review Information Technology efforts at Illinois Wesleyan University. Mr. Spencer visited the campus on September 15-16, 2008. Provost Cunningham enumerated nine key issues in the report:

1. The position structure and its reporting relationship.
2. The position relationship to the Cabinet.
3. Internal governance responsibilities.
4. Expected collaboration between IT, Ames Library, and the Mellon Center.
5. Funding for infrastructure.
6. The case for new staff.
7. Consolidation of IT facilities.
8. Strategic plan for IT.
9. Desired feedback from campus.

Trey Short, Interim Associate Vice President for Information Technology, presented his feedback on Gene Spencer's visit. He stated that Spencer had a good understanding of campus IT and that he had challenged the staff to address some key problems immediately.

Short stated that the current infrastructure has been running very lean and piecemeal. Ideally, we would like to have a four-year replacement cycle for equipment, but it is estimated that this cycle would require $600,000 a year. The installation of the new Blade server has allowed 5 old servers to be retired. Implementation of Internet bandwidth shaping has doubled our system capability, at approximately one fourth of the estimated price, but this system is already somewhat out-dated. The University needs to think about securing another server to provide for redundancy so that we don't experience another Titan-like crash. Plans for redundancy also include moving forward with some hosted services, such as Moodle (a course management system).

Short also indicated that collaboration between Ames Library and IT has already begun and is moving forward successfully. Two IT staff members will have office space in the library, and the library's technology staff members are being integrated into the IT workflow.

Additionally, IT has begun work on revising its strategic plan, focusing on including larger groups than previously addressed. They hope to soon begin discussions with various campus constituencies to obtain input.

President Wilson then asked for questions and comments on Trey's report as well as what issues resonated with Committee members after reading the Spencer report.

The Committee noted:

-- that they were glad that the report reflected the heroic efforts put forth by IT staff in light of both under-funding and under-staffing

-- that in some places, recommendations in the report seemed
inconsistent

-- that there might be a concern among some departments with the recommendation for centrally-located and centrally-scheduled computer labs

-- that the plan for redundancy in services should be supplemented to include some redundancy in staffing so that critical operations are not compromised because a staff member is gone (also noting that this observation could be applied to staffing across the University, not just the IT department)

-- that in terms of infrastructure, there needs to be some discussion about how we balance the academic and administrative computing expectations of our faculty and staff with the social networking expectations of our students

-- that simple preventive maintenance and procedures implemented both by and for faculty and staff could probably result in the need for fewer heroic efforts by IT staff

-- that the report seemed to focus on the ineffectiveness of the current dual-reporting system (to both Provost and VP for Business and Finance), but did not seem to make a clear recommendation for a preferred model

The University administration is still receiving comments on the consultant's report, but the general consensus thus far has been that the consultant provided a good assessment of our IT efforts and some useful recommendations, some of which have already been implemented.

President Wilson thanked the Committee members for their input and noted that May Term, APBO, and budget issues would move back to the top of the agenda for SPBC during the spring.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:40 p.m.