Committee on IT Infrastructure (CITI)

June 7, 2005

Meeting Summary

CITI Attendees: Neal Axelrod, Glyn Davies, Jim Davis, Kathleen Kiser, Tom Lifka, Sam Morabito, Steve Olsen, Albert Setton

Guests: Rebecca Beatty (Corporate Financial Services), Steve Duim (Corporate Financial Services), Nick Hernandez (College), Mike Lee (PDP Participant), Nick Reddingius (OIT), Mike Schilling (CTS), Marsha Smith (OIT), Esther Woo-Benjamin (OIT)

Agenda

1) Report on Travel Express System (Steve Duim, Rebecca Beatty)

Full re-implementation of the Express System is planned for October 2005. The system is currently in production pilot in Psychology, Law, Chancellors Office, and Corporate Financial Services. The new system incorporates feedback from a campus-wide user group and includes enhancements such as: HTML based, improved user interface, and easier FAU entry and validation.

2) CITI Oversight on Student Systems Project (Nick Reddingius)

Nick Reddingius presented the status of the revised student systems project plan:

a) The shape of the revised project plan, the schedule of deliverables, and the staffing plan have been agreed to by a unified student systems project team.

b) An integrated implementation plan for activities in SR2 (a new, less confusing label for the original student records database rationalization project), the Degree Audit Replacement System and the student portion of the Campus Data Warehouse has been framed.

c) Major milestones of the plan, reflecting a staged delivery of data and/or functionality for campus use over the life of the project, have been defined so there are immediate deliverables.

d) Staffing plans and requirements have been reviewed and optimized for maximum use of resources and minimum time to completion of the project.

e) The SR2 staffing plan for FY 05/06, which includes assignments for existing staff and new positions, is still within the originally proposed UTIPP budget and spend rate for the year. The spend rate, which has been slower than planned, would speed up.

f) Previously unknown, and therefore unbudgeted, items still within the scope of the UTIPP definitions have surfaced during the detailed re-planning of SR2, Degree Audit and Data Warehouse - the projects that are currently included in the UTIPP budget. Even though the project is currently within a planned spend rate and accumulated cost, we now anticipate that the actual total cost of delivering the expected functionality will be higher than originally estimated. These revised costs need to be finalized and the gap analysis between the revised plan and the original plans undertaken.

Background information that has previously been presented to CITI:

· Relative to UTIPP budgets, continued operation of the SRDB (a separate system maintained by the Registrar’s Office) will clearly add to the costs. (Note that the original ISTIP/UTIPP plan anticipated retirement of SRDB in 2007, predicated on SR2 being completed in 2005/06.)

· It has become clear that the SRDB provides a number of data and architecture functions to make SR2 and Degree Audit data accessible for a number of campus back-end and front-end systems, the largest of which is my.UCLA. None of changes that are required to make these systems operate in the new environment are part of the project. This previously unknown SRDB functionality cannot simply be shut down, and provisions will have to be made to allow all existing functionality to be transitioned. This is being analyzed now.

· This SRDB functionality still needs to be disentangled so that it can either be reassigned to other systems or accounted for in other ways. With a revised plan for the “UTIPP core” (SR2, Degree Audit and Data Warehouse) the underpinnings are understood and the SRDB analysis can now proceed. It will ultimately have to be treated as a scope change or an additional project. The Project Management Team will take such steps as are necessary to fully scope the SRDB migration; actual migration work would not be started until a new project and funding had been authorized.

3) Launch CITI oversight on campus application portfolio (Jim Davis)

Postponed to July meeting, due to lack of time.

4) Repositioning IT Initiative (Marsha Smith, Jim Davis)

The purpose of this topic was to put the Repositioning IT Initiative into the ITPB Process and introduce the CITI to its expected role of oversight on Repositioning IT resources, with the intent of returning to the July meeting with a proposal for funding.

As Director of the Institutional Planning for the Office of Information Technology, Marsha Smith is providing oversight for all the many components of the initiative, including: surveys, assessments and reviews of networks, data centers, and email & calendaring.

Some of the next steps planned for moving Repositioning forward include: organizing tasks forces around network security and future network design and getting feedback on services from faculty and students.

Anticipated resource requirements include: capacity for project direction and oversight, analysis, faculty and student assessments, task forces, coordination and logistics, change management; project managers for spin-off projects; and consultants.

The Preliminary Assessment (Row 1) stage of the ITPB process includes these steps:

· ITFOC recommendations on approach and involvement to the ITPB (late June)

· ITPB review and approval to support and move forward with process (late June)

· CSG formal assessment of scope and approach (late June)

· CITI review of approach and resource requirements (introduce in June; approve in July)

· ITPB commission detailed design and analysis teams (July/August)