University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Data Collection

We collected data, held focus group sessions as well as interviewed CIOs from leading universities.

Quantitative

• Sample Data:
  • IT Spending — $53M (7% of the total UB budget)
  • 13,400 workstations supported by 69 FTE
  • 773 Servers (OTPS $1.7M, PSR $1.9M, and FTE 26)
  • Administrative applications supported by 162 FTE ($10.8M)
  • There are 68 different telephony systems ($4.5M/yr.)
  • 109 out of a total of 254 classrooms are technology classrooms (43%)
  • Public printing - $900K
  • 443 IT staff FTE
  • 156 student FTE

Qualitative

• There are duplication of services
• Computing equipment depreciates rapidly (many units have inadequate funding for replacement)
• UB needs a comprehensive IT governance and planning process
• There is a lack of a clear definition of IT staff/organization roles and responsibilities, resulting in friction about who should be doing what
• Having to work around central systems has resulted in the need for shadow systems
• Bulk of administrative application activity is done in the distributed units
• The inadequacies of our HR, financial, and student applications has created the need for 75% of the campus units to invest in creating shadow systems
• IT Staff Training is not well funded

Customer Profile Themes

• Local Support
• Increased Access
• Better integration of services
• Improve administrative systems
• Increase number of technology classrooms
• Increase communications
• Better webmail and SPAM/Virus management
• Improve printing
• On-going IT training needed
• Need for off-campus access and support

Benchmarking

We interviewed CIOs from the following leading universities:

1. University of Colorado, Boulder
2. University of Georgia
3. Indiana University
4. University of Iowa
5. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
6. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
7. University of California, San Diego
8. University of Washington
9. University of Wisconsin, Madison
10. University of Pittsburgh
11. Penn State University
12. University of California, Santa Cruz

Key findings can be found in the November 4, 2005 Town Hall Meeting.