September 1, 1998

To:        Executive Vice Chancellor Rory Hume

From:    Chair, Archie Kleingartner

Re:        AITB 1998-99 Agenda

Dear Rory,

This letter contains a few reflections on the academic year just ended - the AITB’s first - and some proposals to you regarding the Board agenda for 1998-99.

Thank you again for attending the final meeting of the AITB for the 1997-98 academic year on June 21. Your presence and thoughtful responses to several important questions regarding the future of information technology at UCLA were the capstone of a challenging year. 1997-98 was a year of transition and some amount of ambiguity in the overall leadership of information technology.

AITB highlights for the year just ended

1. The Board managed its way through several important matters:

Our review of the Coopers and Lybrand "Information Technology Strategic Plan" led to a recommendation of a unified IT governance system under one IT officer who reports to the Executive Vice Chancellor.

The AITB participated in the analyses and recommendation of two technology initiatives - Bruin OnLine Gold and UCLA Connected.

The Board established several communication channels to strengthen its capacity in information technology policy development. These channels include a web site for information sharing and discussion, and a twenty-five member Faculty Resource Panel (FRP) to expand the Board's access to the thinking of the larger academic community.

The AITB has productive links to other IT planning entities on campus including the Information Technology Planning Group (ITPG) headed by Associate Vice Chancellor Allen Solomon and an informal group of department level information officers, coordinated by Jason Frand, Director of Computing at the Anderson School.

2. During 1997-98 Marsha Smith and I conducted interviews with the Provosts and all College and School Deans.

The interviews focused on their resource needs and vision for IT. These interviews made very clear that what we have at UCLA is a highly decentralized information technology environment -- an environment that requires a governance system that encourages collaboration and networking.

The interviews - augmented by AITB discussions during the year - served as the basis for a report on May 18^th to the Chancellor’s Executive Budget Committee. In that report we highlighted the substantive IT initiatives happening in instruction and research at the school and departmental levels and made several recommendations, including the appropriate alignment of central resources to support local needs, networking infrastructure and mechanisms to foster collaboration.

3. This summer - in addition to preparing for the Board’s second year - we have been investigating IT at comparable universities to establish points of comparison for future discussion about IT organization, direction and policy at UCLA. Finally, Marsha and I met with each AITB member individually to solicit ideas and suggestions on directions for Board work in the coming year.

AITB – Agenda for the academic year just beginning

After one year of work and interaction we have a Board that is confident in its role and the members are comfortable in their relationships with each other and to the administration.

We turn now to presenting to you our thinking about the AITB agenda for the 1998-99 academic year. This proposed year long agenda derives from the AITB Charter - to provide leadership in vision and policy for IT at UCLA - and grounded in the work of the last year.

I don’t believe that we can truly accomplish the long-range interests of the campus unless your agenda for IT and the Board’s agenda are fundamentally the same.

Accordingly, the topics below are respectfully submitted for your concurrence or modification. They will serve as the basis for discussion with you at the Board meeting on Wednesday September 30, the first meeting of the new year.

1. Assist in the recruitment of an IT officer for UCLA and advise on the various issues - authority, structure, resources, accountability, and leadership - that will surely arise if this new role and structure are to evolve in the best possible way.
2. The appropriate structure, function and organization of the existing central IT organizations (OAC, CDI, AIS, CTS, OID) in a distributed IT environment. Embedded in this topic is clarification of the core roles and responsibilities for central and local technology organizations.
3. How best to ensure provision of high performance computing resources for research and teaching to the faculty and academic units that require this level of computing support.
4. How best to ensure provision for undergraduate students of needed information technology resources - hardware, support, and training.
5. Development of improved policies and procedures for the IT components of boundary spanning collaborative research activities.
6. Development of improved policies, procedures and material support for Web-based curricular communication, including both on-line information describing the curriculum and on-line delivery of various parts of the curriculum for undergraduate, graduate and continuing education students on campus and off campus.
7. UCLA Connected has been a high profile policy and funding proposal for the past several years. Where should we go from here?

The idea is that these agenda topics, as modified and refined by you and in AITB discussion, would become the working agenda for the Board. In addition, we anticipate that specific issues will be referred to the Board for analysis and advice during the year.

Our sense of timing is that the proposed agenda should be substantially completed by the end of March. I would like to propose that the Chancellor/Executive Vice Chancellor sponsor a Retreat (probably away from UCLA) of the administrative, IT, academic and student leadership of the campus. At this Retreat the AITB report (and possibly some other IT policy matters as well) would be presented for debate and discussion on the way to executive decisions on the AITB’s recommendations regarding UCLA’s IT future.

The AITB looks forward to your participation at our September 30 meeting, and to receive your reaction and comments on our proposed agenda for 1998-99. Obviously, I would be pleased in advance to provide any additional information or to meet with you to discuss any of the matters raised in this letter.