Ravi Blogs about IT Topics

You all received a communication from John a few days ago about the current financial conditions. It referred you to the “Securing the Future” page by President Roth and other relevant links. The global financial crisis, the financial markets, and the pressure this creates on our ability to fundraise all contribute to the problem at hand and as President Roth said in this communication, “Our goal is to cut projected expenditures by $10 million to $15 million over the next four to five years”. This is in addition to the budget savings that we went through during the past three years which was done to reduce the endowment draw  to a more reasonable (5.5%) number. I don’t have to tell you that the measures that will have to be taken to address the problems are serious and all of us will feel the effects for the foreseeable future.

I have worked with the Finance and Administration staff to identify areas where there are opportunities for savings. All the departments have been asked to do the same and we are waiting for the final answers from the senior administration soon.

Unfortunately, I cannot get into the specifics at this time. However, as I wrote to you earlier in an email, there will be some administrative changes around purchasing.

We will be extremely careful about what we purchase. Please note that we are NOT freezing purchasing, rather, every purchase will be scrutinized carefully and some of them may not be approved. During times like these, purchasing decisions we make (after all this scrutiny) may look arbitrary to you – “why is it that you are approving A but not B”. All I can tell you is that these decisions will not be arbitrary and will be vetted carefully before a decision is made. President Roth wrote “This means there will be cuts in the Wesleyan budget, but we will do our best to protect teaching, research and the student experience from the impact of our cost cutting measures.” This in some sense will drive some of our purchasing decisions…

Also, I need to approve all purchases above $500 BEFORE the purchasing decision is made. In most cases, I happen to know about these AFTER the purchase has been made. There are some exceptions to this and I have spoken with those do certain purchasing about them being exempt, but they still need to inform us about the purchases.

We have a freeze on business related travel until further notice. Unless it is absolutely necessary, I will not be approving any travel. Attending a day long NERCOMP SIG in local areas to which you can drive to will be fine.

We are seriously scrutinizing all software purchases. We purchase a significant amount of software for academic use. As per President Roth’s statement, we need to preserve the core academic mission of the institution, so software used to support that will continue to be purchased and renewed. However, we will scrutinize them more – are we licensing them properly based on actual needs? have we looked at various consortial agreements to make sure that we are getting the best pricing? how does the changing landscape of predominantly MACs amongst the students affect the way we look at these software licenses?

Hardware acquisition will slow down a fair amount. This means that we will be looking at options such as thin clients, virtualization, cloud computing as well as any other solutions that will help us save money. We are also talking about increasing the lifecycle of University provided PCs and Macs from 3 years to 4 years. Of course, this is very complicated because, we want to make sure to do this carefully taking into consideration the total cost of support. The longer you keep a computer, the costlier it becomes to support. In addition, Jolee and Heric are looking at how best to manage the lab computer replacement so as to drive down the cost.

As we move forward, one of the things that you will see is that some of what we have been talking about as the general direction for ITS a few months ago are likely to change. We will be looking at service deliveries, prioritization of projects and resource allocation very differently. These types of disruptions are unexpected, but will be necessary if we are to operate with significantly less resources than we are used to. This is where we need to get creative, be optimistic about the future, and look to newer technologies as a way to help resolve some of the problems.

Also, President Roth has challenged us to think about what we can do to bring in revenue. Can we offer certain courses in advanced technologies that are relevant to today’s digital landscape that will appeal to students so they will choose to stay during the summer to learn them and get “certified”? Can we do the same thing for the community members at a reasonable price?

Please feel free to comment on this with ideas that you may have in helping us during these times.