Open Letter to UF IT Staff

In life, we seldom get to choose the problems we must face, their timing, or pace. I think it is safe to assume that nobody asked for the biggest economic downturn since the great depression and that nobody reading this newsletter wished to see Florida among the states hardest hit. We got both barrels anyway. Our cuts in IT at the central level were very substantial at $900,000. Cuts in distributed IT were all determined at the unit levels. I do not have a summary measure of those cuts but, I understand they were substantial too. But, bad as the cuts were, I admit that I frequently worried that they would be worse. I worried when the news from Tallahassee changed dramatically and when the different scenarios for addressing the state's revenue shortfalls were widely debated.

When the cuts were finally decided by the Legislature and when President Machen announced how, where and when those cuts would impact UF, my reaction surprisingly was not one of overwhelming dread. It was not exactly one of relief either. It was more like that moment just after getting hit in the head with a 2x4. It is hard to feel good about something like that. But, there is an instant of partial satisfaction (nobody would call that "relief") when you realize you at least still have a head. Trying not to carry this metaphor too far, IT has been stunned by the budget cuts, like all other units. But, UF IT will survive and will move positively forward in the future. As it did when we survived previous hits, moving forward now with both budget cuts and a new organization will require that we stay focused. Mostly, we need to stay focused on why our work and IT are vitally important to UF and why we committed to these jobs. That takes or brings us to the second subject of this letter, moving forward with the UF IT organization.

Earlier open letters have described the IT Action Plan development and approval process. Subsequent to my last letter and following acceptance by President Machen, the final UF IT Action Plan was presented formally to the Board of Trustees and the Faculty Senate. This was done in mid-March. Then at the President's direction, our work turned from developing a plan to implementing the plan. The remainder of this letter is a status report and update.

Some progress has been made on all the ITAP recommendations. Each area of activity has a lead and coordinator. Dr. Jan van der Aa will lead and facilitate the change from the current Information Technology Advisory Council structure to the new governance model for UF IT. While this work is underway, it is at the very early stages and the current ITAC structure will stay in place until the new structure is fully formed.

As he did during the IT Action Plan process, Dr. Fedro Zazueta is leading the establishment of the new engagement structure. The most immediate thing you will see in this area is a new UF IT Web site due for prime time in about four weeks.

Perhaps the largest and most complex of the recommendations was the creation of an organization that integrates all IT at UF. I am leading that overall project but there are two large subcomponents. The integration of IT at UF required some fundamental reorganization of and our solution involved the establishment of a dual report structure linking core and distributed IT in the same organization. I have met with Senior VPs, and IT and other Administrative leads in IFAS, HSC, E&G and Administration over the last two months. In each case, agreements have been reached about the structure, methods and individuals involved in the dual report lines.

Also within the broad recommendation to create a UF IT organization is the development of two newly formed centrally reporting units. One is the new Office of Information Security and Compliance. That project is being led by Dr. Mike Conlon. The Information Security Manager's unit that previously reported under Computing and Networking Services has already moved under the CIO. A plan for full development of the new unit consolidating HSC security is due shortly and a staged implementation of the remainder of the plan will likely extend out over several months. In the near future, we will open a search for a Chief Information Security Officer to manage the new unit.

A second newly formed unit is University Systems which involves combining enterprise applications (the three largest of which are ERP, Student Records, and the Course Management System) under one lead and reporting to the CIO. That work too is underway. Ed Poppell and I are working together on the largest piece of this reorganization which involves integrating the ERP group (Bridges) into the University Systems group. Ed and I are evaluating the timing of opening a search for a lead of the University Systems unit. Ideally, filling that position and the new CIO position will be parallel activities.

Stabilizing the funding for the Core IT areas was also a big goal of the ITAP. More than $14M of annual core IT expenditures were routinely "not secured" at the beginning of each year. This was sub-optimal, to say the least. The RCM model now has Core IT as a cost center and this issue is being resolved under that plan which starts this FY and will be fully in place in 2011. In addition to stabilizing these funds, there was a great deal of other budget organization work needing attention to bring the new UF IT to the point of managing an integrated IT operation. Tim Fitzpatrick has been and is the lead manager of that project. Much has been accomplished in collecting and organizing and rationalizing the various accounts. The budgets of the several units will be part of the UF IT organization going forward and annual functional area budgets will be allocated by the CIO.

The last major recommendation of the ITAP was to put focus on a few large IT projects beneficial to UF. Significant portions of three projects (a second off-site data center, improved support of academic instruction, and improved support of enterprise systems) will directly benefit from tech fee funds. Much planning work by Tim Fitzpatrick, David Burdette and others has already been done for the new data center and the process for selecting an architect and builder is underway. In the best of timeframe scenarios, the new data center should be open for business in 14 months.

I close with a final note of appreciation to the UF IT community. This has been a rough year by any reasonable measure -- bad budgets and a lot of change piled on top of each other. Through it all, I have found your professionalism and commitment to your jobs and UF admirable and reassuring. You have all probably heard me say it before but it warrants restating one more time. Providing high quality fundamentally important services like IT requires more than that talented people simply show up for work each day. It requires continuous extra effort and deep commitment, the kind I have seen effectively demonstrated in the UF IT community for many years. For that, and the help and support you have always given me, please accept my enduring thanks.

Chuck Frazier