1. Prior Strategic Choices
Move from Technology Centric to Service Centric
(3 reorgs since 2000)
Centralization of IT Departments and Resources
Academic Technologies, Administrative Systems
Servers, Web Servers
Unified / Centralized Voice and Data Networks
Organizationally and literally
Administrative Systems Council
14 year ( ), 80+ Million dollar effort
Decision to remediate code for Y2K
NSIT – Networking Services and Administrative Technologies
Thank you. A little background on how we got to where we are today. Our IT organization continues to move to a service centric model. That move has been a key driver in the 3 reorganizations that have occurred since 2000.
Centralization of IT was strategic decision; Academic Technologies, and Administrative Systems became part of NSIT. We also eliminated and reduced the number of (rogue) and web servers on campus. There is still a ways to go. Today, our campus has more than 2 dozen servers currently operating.
The Voice and Data organizations were also combined. As we move closer to Voice Over IP, we can see that the distinction between the two continues to narrow and blur.
Lastly, our decision to remediate code for Y2K continues to stay with us, as do those systems. Prior to Y2K, we made a conscious decision to keep our existing systems, and modify code to address Y2K issues.
We are now in the middle of an extremely large effort to replace the University’s aging Administrative systems. We have replaced our Student System, and are just a few short months away from replacing our Development (Fundraising System). That leaves only the HR system, Financials, Payroll, Research Administration, Expense Management, Time and Attendance, and a few other systems to replace as well.
I do wonder what the impact would have been if the University has completed 1 or 2 of the Admin systems replacements prior to the Year 2000.

2. Future Strategic Choices
Support and Enable the University's Strategic Objectives
Evolution of Academic Programs, Support for faculty and students, Int’l
Service Orientation
Client relations, General Services, Relationship Mgrs, ITIL, Service Delivery
High Performance Research Computing
Administrative Systems Implementations
Customize –vs- Vanilla, Best of Breed -vs- Suite, High Costs
Combining UCHospitals and BSD to create the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC)
Greater Agility and Efficiency
Positioning process, Open Source, Outsourcing, Virtualization, VOIP, Unified Messaging, SOA/ESB, Portfolio Management, Collaborative tools &applctns.
That brings up to today (the present)….
We have a new President, who is approximately 18 months into his tenure. He has been a very active President, with many initiatives, desires, and needs; All of which are extremely urgent. At a high level; our President has 3 broad objectives;
Continue and Increase the evolution of the academic programs. in some cases; this may result in completely new programs coming into existence
Increased support for the faculty and students.
And (3); Increasing the University’s reputation and engagement on a national and international scale.
So if we didn’t know or appreciate it in the past, we are certainly a service organization. Good news is that we’ve made progress in that area. The challenge will be in keeping pace with the needs and desires of the leadership at the University.
We now have a General Services Organization, led by a Senior Director; we have a Senior Director for Client Relations, we have several relationship managers who interact with large key clients across campus, and we also have a number of other efforts that support and pull together the service centric organization effort. These are all changes that have occurred in the past two years.
We don’t do a good job of supporting research computing. High Performance Research Computing is a very expensive, resource intensive effort, and we will need to decide is this is area where we should apply our limited resources.
The Administrative Systems efforts will have an enormous impact on the University. Our 14 year program is running into excessive costs, delayed timelines, and impatient business sponsors. It is critical that the IT organization succeed in replacing the University’s core administrative systems.
The University of Chicago Medical Center is a combination of two large existing organizations (Which includes the IT organizations for The hospitals and Biological Sciences Division) .The competitive and financial impact of this decision is large. It’s important that it be a success.
In many ways, the strategic choices l have listed will require us to be more agile and efficient as the needs and demands of the University continue to increase, but the financial resources will not necessarily keep pace. To that end, we must make smart decisions that allow us to be more agile and efficient. Such as taking advantage of open source technology where appropriate, outsourcing non-core processes and operations, using virtualization technology to allow us to be efficient and flexible as needs change.
However, All of these choices will not make a difference unless…

3. Future Strategic Choices
Attracting, Building and Retaining
Human Capital
…Unless we are able to attract, grow, and retain our talented staff members. As our CIO has said, hardware continues to decrease in cost, but the importance of hiring, retaining, and building our staff is the most important choice we have to make.
Thank you, I’ll take questions.