7/28/06:  Memorandum from Provost L. Nielsen & VC Finance and Business C. Leffler

On June 29th, Nielsen and Leffler announced to academic and administrative computing staff a recommendation to the Chancellor for the establishment of a Chief Information Officer (CIO) position.  Please see the attached memo.

While many projects and initiatives will continue moving forward in parallel with the creation and hiring of a CIO, others will be in more of a holding pattern. As regards the CCEI, RMIS and ITD will continue to provide services to the customers they currently serve and there will be no overall changes to the email and calendar infrastructure on campus.

2/7/06 Update

As we have gathered data on campus, several units have written letters to the CCEI team regarding this issue. We have been asked to share these letters with the campus community, thus we are posting these letters online.

In addition, at the past meeting we distributed an attribute matrix of issues and concerns that have been raised as well as the 7 strategic decision factors that Sam Averitt discussed at the 1/10/2006 meeting. These are also available online.

These materials are available to the NC State community - you will need your Unity ID and password to access.

Please let us know if you encounter any difficulties accessing these materials. View the materials here.

Thanks,
Sarah

10/3/05 Update on CCEI Initiative

The Executive Summary and Final Report were delivered to Sam Averitt and Steve Keto on September 15, 2005. They met with Provost Larry Nielsen and Charlie Leffler, Associate Vice-Chancellor for Finance and Business on Thursday, September 29, 2005.

We are pleased to say that the report’s recommendations have been accepted by Nielsen and Leffler. To fully understand the recommendations (found below), especially the solution sets, please reference the report.

Our recommendations were:

• Select a solution set, and, if desired, a product. Once selected, the coordinating team will provide a detailed transition/ implementation plan that will include more specific costs (hardware, software, training, education), time lines for the transition and ongoing support / maintenance of product(s).
• Make a commitment to provide resources dedicated to ongoing training and education on IT issues beyond the transition period.
• Make a commitment to stay abreast of emerging standards and technologies (e.g., calconnect.org) so that future evaluations can be done. This allows us as an institution to make sure we are providing our customers with the best possible environment for these services.

While accepting the recommendations, they did not choose a product, as more information is needed to help make this crucial decision. However, they have decided to focus on the two systems that are currently in use on campus: Groupwise and Cyrus email/ Oracle calendar. To assist them in choosing one of these, they have asked for two additional pieces of information:

• more detailed costing information (scale-out costs and ongoing costs)
• an attribute matrix outlining specifically what information is needed to make a decision on a product. Broad categories of attributes include risk factors, transition issues, user flexibility, operational issues, functional issues, support issues, and future development.

To develop the attribute matrix, we plan to gather input from other people on campus; we will be asking the CCEI sub-committees and the Academic IT Directors for their input. We will be meeting with these groups soon, as we have been given a 4 week time frame for reporting back.

The coordinating team would like to extend their thanks to the members of the sub-committees for their time, energy and input. Their input was most valuable as we compiled the report and recommendations.

We value and welcome feedback from all of the campus community in this endeavor. We look forward to working with everyone to continue moving forward with this process and to ultimately delivering to the campus community a solution.

Sincerely,

CCEI Coordinating Team
Sarah Noell, Project Coordinator
Cheri Renninger, Technical Co-chair
Harry Nicholos, Technical Co-chair
Tim Lowman
Larry Robinson
Craig Zimmer

View Report, including executive summary and appendices.

NC State University is undertaking a self-assessment of the email and calendar services that are offered to the campus community. These initiatives have as their overarching goals:

• To do a cost benefit assessment and analyze the way the university offers email and calendar services on campus.
• To improve the method by which information and input is gathered by decisions makers.
• To make recommendations to the administration concerning our business practices and suggest improvements and/or changes if needed.

As a university, we need to have a better understanding of how we are investing our IT dollars. Questions that we would like to answer include: are the services we are offering providing our clients with the functionality they need?; could we offer these services in a more cost effective and efficient manner without impacting service and functionality?

Chancellor Oblinger has asked for recommendations by September 15, 2005.

Please check back frequently for updates and progress reports on these initiatives.