101 BEST PRACTICES >> Administrative IT

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101 BEST PRACTICES >> Administrative IT

11/24/2006

86 :: TRACK THOSE SHARED ASSETS!

IVONNE BACHAR tracks 'stuff.'

When it comes to the tracking of IT assets—and the countless dollars saved by watching those equipment leases, expired software licenses, and the like—a new wrinkle has emerged: the complexity IT experts foresee in the tracking of shared assets. According to Stanford University’s (CA) Ivonne Bachar, an authority on asset management who regularly speaks on the topic and is an instructor for and past president of the National Property Management Association, administrators need to look carefully at all the IT “stuff” they have earmarked for collaborative efforts, and come up with tracking and management processes and tools to assist. “As we move more into collaborative business relationships with other universities, there has to be a way to track how those assets are shared, how they are funded, and what they are authorized to be used for. Often, Bachar points out, “tracking moveable equipment is viewed as an administrative burden. But it can be streamlined. Managing IT assets, she states, “can very effectively be a core business process.” More info here.

87 :: SINGLE-SYSTEM ASSET MANAGEMENT

Most large schools use software for managing large depreciable assets such as building and air conditioning systems. But the software they’re already relying on may be able to manage campus IT assets, as well. Stanford University (CA) had implemented Sunflower Systems as part of a larger campus overhaul of its financial management systems. The school (already using the capital assets management module) is now using the inventory asset management module, agreement assets module, and IT management module, as well. According to Ivonne Bachar, director of property management, because Sunflower interfaces with the school’s Oracle back-end database and financials, a single repository of data can now be used for capital and sponsor-owned, as well as IT, assets. Stanford currently tracks IT assets and other items, plus the stewardship, accountability, and transaction history of sponsor-owned, donated, loaned, and leased equipment. The school also uses its system for help with replacement planning and the disposition of assets. Tracking how IT assets are disposed of (with HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley regulations, confidentiality concerns, and security issues) can be hugely complex, says Bachar.

88 :: THE PERFECT RFP

To locate the best technology solution for your needs, a request for proposal (RFP) is key, yet it’s amazing how few are well-crafted. Experts agree that before you add on, every RFP should contain these six critical sections: 1) The synopsis or mission statement, which summarizes the technology problem and the solution required; 2) a list of technical requirements that outlines mandatory functionalities of a vendor’s solution; 3) the timeline for project completion, including deadlines for completed RFPs and incremental milestones; 4) a sketch of budgetary expectations, to give vendors a ballpark idea of what a school would like to spend; 5) specific information pertaining to warranties, payment schedules, and other “nittygritty” details; 6) legalese stipulating that the RFP is a full- fledged legal document enabling institutions to hold vendors liable for the solutions they promise therein. No one of these details is more important than the others, but the most important thing to remember: Be clear so that a vendor can respond in a way that you can evaluate. More info here.

89 :: PARTNERING FOR COMMUNITY SOURCE FINANCIALS

Lee Belarmino (associate VP of IT) and his peers at San Joaquin Delta College (CA) have been instrumental in the development of Kuali financials, the first bold step for community source administrative software. After attending an Open Source Summit (hosted by rSmart) and a presentation on Sakai, Belarmino and his colleagues went to lunch with John Robinson, the founder of rSmart, and Barry Walsh, director of university information systems at Indiana University, and Delta now has a sizable commitment as a founding partner in Kuali: a half million dollars, between funds and dedicated resources.

The Kuali partners have since completed the first deliverable, the test drive. “The approach is service-oriented architecture, where you can tailor the system to your needs and have the ability to change,” says Belarmino. “And we’ve eliminated anything proprietary: You can get everything you need for Kuali development, free. By July ’07 or early ’08, we’ll have a full-fledged financial system, ready to install.” More info here.

90 :: ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT MEETS PRIORITIZED CHALLENGES

Schools have all sorts of enrollment management challenges, and though it’s tempting to look for whiz-bang solutions, the more prudent (and usually more economical) route is to selfassess and carefully prioritize need. At the University of Cincinnati (OH), moving away from a paper prospecting/ recruiting system (and its incumbent costs) was the goal, but administrators were looking for a system that would enable them to capture all prospective students in a single database via uploaded data files, manual data entry from telephone transactions or inquiry cards, and by students themselves via the school’s website. Importantly, the technology solution also had to integrate with the university’s student record system and keep bounce-backs to a minimum (the SIS was unique to the university), and so administrators needed detailed tracking capabilities. They also wanted prospects to receive attractivelooking e-mails. Finally, customer support was a priority; they could not afford the system going down.

Administrators chose Hobsons’ EMT Connect, and claim that since they implemented the solution, average e-mail response rates increased from an “abysmal” 3 percent, to between 20 and 30 percent. And e-mail communications saved over $100,000 in print production and postage costs. Clearly, the solution choice was a good fit, but the university’s methodical needs assessment was key.

91 :: STOP THE SWAP

In an initial wireless network pilot program at Charleston Southern University (SC), CIO Rusty Bruns discovered that unforeseen demands were bogging down the network. “We weren’t prepared for what students were doing in downloading music and DVDs,” he acknowledged. “We had about 550 users, and just 40 of them ate up the whole bandwidth.” To address the problem, the school installed Packeteer, an appliance that monitors network traffic and allows individual access points to be controlled. File-swapping network activities are restricted, Bruns adds. “In the beginning, I was seen as the bad guy because I wouldn’t let students trade music. But in the long run, none of our students got busted for illegal swapping, so I turned out to be a pretty good guy.” More info here.

92 :: OPEN SOURCE SIS: GETTING BUY-IN

San Joaquin Delta College (CA) Associate VP of IT Lee Belarmino thinks a community source student information system (SIS) is of paramount importance. “We believe this is the Big One, and [a system] we are anxious to [help create and implement]. We’ve had a number of meetings with the other interested schools about whether it’s feasible to build an SIS in pure service-oriented architecture and what kind of attention it would attract. Responses were quite positive. Plus, we’ve identified vendors who may be willing to partner with us on open source code, so we won’t be starting from scratch. But without question, Delta will be part of this next initiative.” How important to such a huge undertaking is presidential buy-in and pan-campus teamwork? And what part of such an effort is supported by know-how, what part by belief in what you’re doing? “My president and I have a great partnership,” Belarmino asserts, “and our team at the college is so good; they’re the ones making this happen. How much we believe in [open source] is a passion. We all believe that we’re onto something big. More info here.

93 :: DATA MINING FOR ACADEMIC SUCCESS

INDICATORS OF SUCCESS
WebCT Logins and SAT
Scores Relative to GPA

Researchers at Purdue University (IN) are developing models to predict academic success: academic analytics that will eventually be used to create interventions for at-risk students. Their first step was to identify data that could be mined from the course management system (CMS) and from the student information system (SIS), and demonstrate which factors are most significant. Researchers studied an initial sample of about 1,500 students during the fall ’05 semester, and quickly expanded their work to reflect the entire range of WebCT-supported (blackboard.com) classes at Purdue in spring ’06. Analyses now include data on some 130,000 seats in the CMS, representing more than 30,000 students.

The researchers are rigorously examining indicators of aptitude and effort, by mining historical data such as SAT scores and GPA from the SIS (reflecting aptitude), and data on student use of the CMS from the Oracle back-end database connected to their WebCT system (reflecting effort). Ultimately, the end goals are to develop intelligent agents that will automatically take actions (such as alerting the instructor that a student is likely in trouble, or notifying the student about help sessions that are available), and to provide trend data to administrators with an interest in retention. More info here.