Campus Profile: University of California Office of the President Copyright 1991 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 14, Number 3, Fall 1991. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its dateappear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information technology in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301, 303-449-4430, e-mail info@CAUSE.colorado.edu UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT ************************************************************************ This article is based on a visit to the University of California Office of the President by editor Julia Rudy. The Campus Computing Environment department of CAUSE/EFFECT regularly focuses on the information technology environment of a CAUSE member institution, to promote a better understanding of how the information technologies are organized and managed in colleges and universities of various sizes and types. ************************************************************************ One of the largest and most renowned centers of higher education in the world, the University of California (UC) was chartered in 1868 as the state's only land-grant institution. Today, UC has a faculty of nearly 7,500 and a total enrollment of 166,547 undergraduate and graduate students on nine campuses--Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz-- with academic study areas spanning more than 150 disciplines. The University of California Office of the President (UCOP) is located in the Kaiser Building in the city of Oakland. President David Gardner refers to UCOP as the "corporate headquarters" of UC--an $8.2 billion-a year enterprise. Information technology organization Within UCOP, the Office of Information Systems and Administrative Services (IS&AS), under the direction of Associate Vice President Richard P. West, is responsible for providing planning and policy guidance on University-wide academic and instructional computing issues, telecommunications activities, and administrative information systems; for supporting UCOP's computing, information, and telecommunications needs; for supporting an online catalog for all University library holdings as well as access to selected databases; and for providing the physical network and selected protocol support for an intercampus telecommunications network. Because the University is highly decentralized, IS&AS provides more policy and planning guidelines than direct operational support for the campuses. In the late 70s, a presidential task force on administrative information systems recommended that the central UC administration move from being a centralized operations organization to a decentralized support organization. Until then, major operational systems had been implemented and maintained by the central office for all campuses, but it had become clear that these systems served neither the information needs of the central office nor the operational needs of the campuses. As a result of task force recommendations, campuses became responsible for their own operational systems, while the central office became responsible for developing and maintaining both operational systems for the Office of the President and "corporate" systems for the University-- management information systems to support University decision-making, planning, and external reporting requirements. IS&AS is made up of several functional units which deliver services to the Office of the President and to the University. Information Systems and Computing, under the direction of James Dolgonas, is responsible for providing integrated computing and administrative networking support for all library and administrative operations at UCOP, including developing and maintaining applications to support corporate functions. IS&C works closely with the campuses to establish recommended guidelines for a common computing hardware and software environment for major administrative applications at all campuses. Although campuses develop and operate their own administrative systems, an exception to this is a centrally developed and maintained University-wide payroll/personnel system that the campuses have individually implemented, except for three which contracted with IS&C to run this system. Several other smaller University-wide systems, such as budget and staffing, and a health and environmental safety database, are also managed centrally. Information Management, under the direction of Anita Eble, is responsible for identifying detailed information needs of UCOP, developing specifications for campuses to provide data for the corporate systems at UCOP, and ensuring that data extracted from campus operations systems meet those requirements. This unit also serves as a liaison between UCOP users defining their systems needs and the technicians in IS&C who develop those systems. According to Eble, Information Management staff have to have a broad understanding of the University and all its functions because of the role they play in helping to define management systems needs and assuring data quality in the standard and ad hoc reports they produce. Telecommunications Services, managed by Michael Shannon, is responsible for implementing all voice services for UCOP, consulting with campuses on telecommunications issues, and providing liaison with the San Diego Supercomputer Center. In addition, this unit designed and maintains the Intercampus Telecommunications Network (ITN) which provides data and video support to all nine campuses, UCOP, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and Lick Observatory. Campuses are responsible for implementing their own local area and campus backbone networks, but Telecommunications Services provides the ITN connectivity between campuses and centrally manages the ITN network resources. Administrative and academic applications are supported. Telecommunications Services' latest initiative is a videoconferencing pilot involving UCOP, UC/Davis, UC/San Diego, and UCLA. Initial use will be to facilitate inter-campus administrative meetings, but clearly there is potential for instructional use in the future. Library Automation, under the direction of Clifford Lynch, is responsible for providing a database of University-wide library holdings, the MELVYL* online catalog, to the entire University community, negotiating licenses for and implementing proprietary databases such as MEDLINE and Current Contents, and working with the Library Council to develop University-wide library automation policies and plans. Library Automation also operates a TCP/IP network through which campuses access the MELVYL system. UC is recognized internationally for groundbreaking work in information retrieval standards, especially for work with Z39.50 implementations. UC actively participates in the Coalition for Networked Information, created by the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and EDUCOM to advance scholarship and intellectual productivity through networked information resources. West chairs the Coalition's Steering Committee, and Lynch provides leadership for its Architectures and Standards working group. Special Projects, headed by Richard Katz, is responsible for significant elements of planning and strategy development in information technology. Additional functions of IS&AS include _University Printing Services_, a University-wide self-supporting non-profit service organization offering professional printing production and library binding services, under the direction of George Craig; Records Management Services, which supports all records management functions for the Office of the President, under the direction of Mary Stephens; and Building Services, managed by Beverly McDonald, which provides facilities management and security services for all UCOP properties. Planning and direction- setting for IT According to West, the primary role of IS&AS is information management and technology management in support of University administration: "Our motto is management first, technology second." IS&AS has a consultative relationship with UC campuses, providing guidance to help campuses establish goals that are congruent with the directions the University wants to go. The complex but effective mechanism through which consensus is built is a set of councils, committees, and working groups--some standing and some ad hoc--made up of campus and UCOP representatives who meet as needed to establish policy and strategic directions and approaches. Primary among these for information technology are the Joint Operations Group (made up of administrative systems representatives from all nine campuses), the University Communications Planning Group, the Academic Computing Council, and the Library Council (made up of all campus librarians). Most of these groups have subgroups that deal with specific, often technical, issues. Rather than forging a single, formal long-range plan, University directions and approaches for information technology are articulated through multiple documents, each of which addresses a strategic IT area. These documents are usually derived from the work of task forces appointed by the councils. Ronald Brady, senior vice president for administration, believes that in a university as complex and decentralized as UC, "you can't force a grand plan. You've got to know what you're trying to sell and then make it happen incrementally--sell it in pieces." New campuses present opportunities In the late 1980s, the University recognized the need to establish new campuses by the end of the decade to meet projected increased undergraduate enrollments (UC is committed to accommodating all qualified applicants). Planning for these new campuses naturally raised academic support issues--what should their libraries, computing environment, and instructional technology look like? A committee on academic support planning, charged with examining these issues, published a set of recommendations that focuses on the importance of an electronic network to not only serve the campus but also connect to regional, national, and international networks, and for that network to provide the infrastructure for library, academic, and research computing. Significant in the document is recognition of the need for central offices to coordinate and manage the network and computing and to set appropriate standards, and the need for budget formulae to ensure sufficient funding. An academic computing task force is currently working toward proposing models for instructional computing use to generate budget formulae for existing campuses, to update those articulated in a 1984 report. As a counterpart to the academic plan, Brady charged a task group, chaired by West and comprising vice chancellors from the campuses and UCOP representatives, with examining administrative issues and opportunities facing the founding leaders of the new campuses. Their report and recommendations were recently published as the document, Sustaining Excellence in the 21st Century: A Vision and Strategies for the University of California's Administration. Technology as an agent of change Sustaining Excellence sets forth a new management paradigm and set of operating strategies based on the belief that "outstanding administration can enhance a university's pursuit of academic excellence." According to Katz, "Sustaining Excellence proposes the adoption of the 'network' organizational vision, characterized by a flatter organizational structure, that rewards employees for efforts that enhance overall campus strategies rather than those that optimize organizational subunits." The report recommends that a major planning commitment be made to the campus information technology infrastructure, and identifies four strategies for IT: * access to all appropriate central administrative systems via networks; * distributed online transaction processing capabilities with a common interface between departments and central systems; * integration of central systems; and * deployment of paper-reducing technologies where cost effective. Perhaps most significant among the task group's conclusions is their identification of IT as a change agent and recognition of the role that network technology can play in helping the flow of information for management and administration. According to West, the report has been very well received by campus administrators, several of whom see the recommendations for the new campuses as a potential blueprint for "reengineering" the way they are currently doing business. "It's not a 'shelf' document, but is being viewed as offering an opportunity to improve current organizational practices through structural change and technological investment." Several task forces have already produced reports addressing areas that will help turn the vision into reality, including electronic authorization systems and electronic data interchange (EDI). Several pilots are under way to demonstrate how these concepts can be applied, e.g., evaluating EDI usage in purchasing and invoice payment at UCLA and in purchasing and for direct deposit of student stipends at Berkeley. Also to be pursued is an EDI pilot to explore exchange of student information among all campuses and several other universities, as well as between each campus and a K-12 public school district and/or a community college. A recently published report by IS&C offers a new model for providing student services in the future using emerging technologies and includes specific "next steps" that UC can take to begin to revolutionize such services. Information management is key Information access and management are critical questions for universities in the future, according to West. Just giving users network connections is not enough; they must have meaningful access to library, academic, and administrative databases. He believes cooperative efforts between libraries and administrative computing personnel will be fundamental to information access and delivery in the future, a major reason for UC's participation in the Coalition for Networked Information. How will UC create the infrastructure to implement the next generation of information systems and database access? A task force made up of representatives from administrative, academic, and library constituencies has been charged with investigating what it will take to provide the necessary architectures and interfaces for a "single system image"--an underpinning concept highlighted in both the academic and administrative planning visions for UC's new campuses. According to Brady, "The concept of information management--technology- based or not--is still not in the everyday conversation of presidents and chancellors; there's probably more conversation about large-scale computing and telecommunications, which have caught their attention for obvious reasons. But chief executives for the most part don't understand or appreciate administrative information systems. They don't really know where information comes from; we just give it to them." Perhaps the vision of Sustaining Excellence in the 21st Century will help to change that. ************************************************************************ Campus Profile: University of California Office of the President