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February 17, 2000

Administration responds to questions about new information technology plan

The provost and members of his senior staff are making the rounds to various University groups to provide an overview and answer questions about Pitt's new information technology (IT) plan.

A draft of the plan, titled "An Information Technology Foundation for the 21st Century," was distributed last month to all University Senate committees, the Dean's Council and academic units.

Provost James Maher addressed Faculty Assembly on the plan Jan. 25. (See University Times, Feb. 3.) Maher asked for feedback on the plan by mid-March. The plan will go into effect July 1, he said.

Robert Pack, vice provost for Academic Planning and Resources Management, focused on parts of the IT plan at a meeting of the Senate's plant utilization and planning (PUP) committee Jan. 24.

"This plan is not an attempt to off-load costs on budgets that are already inadequate," Pack said. "The provost has indicated in this plan what it's going to cost. Some money will be provided centrally and distributed to units. But there are balancing issues: What are the units, and what is the administration, responsible for? And the locus of authority has shifted significantly to the units. We're attempting to put resources where the responsibility resides, which will allow units to make maximum effectiveness of what they have."

The IT plan calls for Pitt to spend $9.6 million in additional money over the next three fiscal years, beginning July 1. In the current fiscal year, the University budgeted about $15 million for computing services and systems development and about $19 million for network services.

The additional funding will be used to upgrade computing infrastructure, equipment and facilities, maintain the 800 University-operated modems, expand the University's digital library resources and increase PittNet support, among other initiatives.

"Deans and departments spend a lot on technology," Pack said. "Previously, they didn't think it was their worry so much, but obviously it is as units need increases and upgrades in technology. This is not only a matter for the research community to recover costs for everybody. These are mission-critical applications and departments can't afford not to support them."

Under the plan, units need to take responsibility to decide what to support, Pack said. "That includes taking inventory. What software do you have? What do you support? What do you need? Units will have to put that in their budget plans."

The central administration's role will be to coordinate purchases across the University and to negotiate the best rates, Pack said. "Units will be directed toward certain cost-effective purchases where the central administration can get at a better price from preferred partnerships."

PUP committee member Michael Spring, who is associate professor of telecommunications, raised a number of concerns about the information technology plan.

Spring said the plan, which recommends an additional charge for better remote access, discourages faculty from working at home, which bucks the trend in the corporate world.

Pitt is negotiating with an information service provider (ISP) for a preferred partnership that will offer a monthly fee option for employees seeking better off-campus computer access.

The IT plan acknowledges that remote-access service is inadequate to handle the high volume of users, especially in peak evening hours.

"This committee is concerned with optimizing the use of our limited space on campus," Spring said. "With faculty sharing offices, with a premium on conference space and other common space, my concern is there's nothing in the document to encourage working at home. Technology allows for teleconferencing, sharing files, doing real work at home."

Spring said the trend in the business world is to have companies build offices for employees in the home, rather than charging them a fee if they want to work there.

"Second, this plan calls for what I would call a 'port-centric view of cyberspace.' What about wireless technology? Are we going for any wireless connectivity?"

Spring said that Carnegie Mellon is now completely wireless. "A student can walk across campus with a laptop and be connected anywhere. There was talk of wireless technology here five years ago. What's changed? It doesn't seem to make sense to me to drill through granite to wire a room."

Pack replied that the Information Technology Steering Committee, which prepared the plan, considered these questions. "That's why this plan has a short horizon; it's a three-year plan. We agree the environment will be changing dramatically. The question is: What can we do, given limited resources, so as not to do the wrong thing? In some ways, it's helpful that we didn't invest in the wrong things in the recent past. It hurt us some, beingbehind, but we can plan short-term, stay competitive and adjust as we think appropriate. This plan provides a framework for that."

Pack said that Pitt is watching Carnegie Mellon carefully. "We're interested in what they're doing with wireless [technology]. But you have to understand Carnegie Mellon is totally different: It's a much smaller area; students are, for the most part, housed on campus; the students have to own their own machines; the curriculum is much narrower in range; they support a lot of high-end users, and only a few casual users."

Pack said Pitt is investing in wireless technology in such areas as new construction and instructional settings.

"We're committed to upgrading our classrooms with the best and newest technology. That is a standard part of renovations. And in new buildings, we're doing the same thing."

Pack said there is general agreement that connectivity is critical. "But we support a fair amount of low-end users, mostly for e-mail. And our administrative sites as more service-oriented environments are low-end. They're not instructional. There needs to be more of an interaction with people. And faculty, to some extent, have always worked at home. Faculty patterns may not change dramatically. We're watching that closely."

Spring also said he was concerned that the University was creating a environment of information-rich and information-poor students. "For the 5,000 or so undergrads who live in residence halls there is a 1:1 student to port ratio," he said. "For the 10,000 graduate students, the off-campus students and the regional campus commuting students, plus faculty and staff, in round numbers a total of about 25,000, using the 800 modems, that's about 30:1 person to access rate. Yet the graduate students pay the same network services fee. And now they may be asked to pay an additional ISP fee if they want better access."

But Pack defended the ISP proposal. "We looked at choices: We could continue to grow the modem pool, as we have from 200 to 300 to 500-some to 800. But each time we did that we quickly arrived at the saturation level. So the improvement is marginal. Second, the technology up until now has been uniform: We'd purchase 28K modems and 56K digital modems. But the end of that technology is near. New technology means it doesn't make sense to invest in supporting old technology."

Also, Pack said, the University never wants to step back to slower or less reliable service.

"The question became how to build an environment that will grow and change as technology grows, where there is a revenue source to support it and that can overcome the primary impediment of authentication for access. An individual now can't go to an ISP and get access to restricted files, PittNet, databases, the library resources. That's part of the agreements we made when purchasing the equipment. To expand access to the public would cost us multi-times over," Pack said.

Instead, Pitt decided to hook up with a single ISP, which has many advantages, he said. "The user is authenticated. The ISP is competitive and has an interest in upgrading. Users who only want the Internet can go directly there and won't have to be re-routed through PittNet anymore, which the University has had to pay for."

If fewer people are using the modem pool in favor of the ISP service, that service will improve, Pack said. Pitt also will continue to maintain the 600-plus ports currently in public areas such as libraries, the William Pitt Union and computer labs for non-resident student use.

PUP committee member James DeAngelis commented that, in his opinion, the support section of the IT plan took too narrow a view. "Support is defined in the context of IT, but it's really much more than that. I would like to see more centralized support. The Help Desk works extraordinarily well, and maybe its mandate should expand beyond the information technology plan to resource needs, access to syllabi, space needs, to put one person between callers and their needs."

Pack replied, "As you know, at this University, you don't mandate anything. But, if you show it works, show a demonstrably improved service, you can get people to buy into it. Our hope would be that the Help Desk service will expand to the telephone system and the library system and, in the long run, maybe Facilities Management, so they don't need to maintain their own separate services. We're working in that direction."

Pack said that since the Help Desk service went to 24 hours, the total volume has increased significantly. "Originally, in the 8:30 to 5 time slot, it was used by staff about 70 percent of the time. But students don't do their work between 8:30 and 5. You can't give them a recording, saying call back tomorrow morning. Their work is due tomorrow morning. And we've found, doing one-hour grids, there is never a time, even at odd hours of the night, of not enough calls to justify keeping it open."

PUP committee member Marilyn Ross asked Pack to elaborate on the University's policies on e-commerce.

The vice provost said there are two issues, the University's internal e-commerce and outside advertising. "Students expect, and should have, web-based commerce available for financial arrangements with the University: paying bills, credit-card business, ordering books from the bookstore and so on."

But outside advertising is a different matter, Pack said. "It's clear to me that students don't seem to find it abhorrent to have ads on their services, because they get the services for free. YAHOO, e-mail, personal web-pages are provided for free in exchange for banner ads on web sites all over the place. We don't care too much what they're doing on the network side unless they violate the law or some policy. If a student wants to use the computer to shop, that's fine. But are students commodities? It would be a source of revenue to sell addresses, but we have privacy concerns. Should the University be treating students like magazine subscribers? Right now, we don't plan to do that."

–Peter Hart


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