Budget Cuts and Enhanced Services

As we start the 2006-'07 Academic Year, the University of Cincinnati's budget challenge is topic number one on campus. I would be remiss if I did not recognize that in this year-startup issue of UCit now. But I'll cover it only after I note the many changes and new services offered to faculty, staff, and students for this AY – because the continuation of momentum and increasing services are the real challenge facing all of us.

From UCit, service enhancements include the following:

• the completion of UC Flex HR (Human Resources) and COEUS
  - online personnel actions and e-mail routing are only the start of distributed HR services
  - implementation of MIT's COEUS research award management system for the central office is the foundation for online proposal development and routing through closing of an award for researchers
• the enhancement of UC's central e-mail services
  - doubling the storage allocation per user
  - adding anti-spyware to already available no-cost antivirus protection
  - increasing spam filtering
  - more to come:  a series of online information tutorials on how to better manage e-mail, including clarification of legal archiving obligations; a subscription service offering virtually unlimited e-mail storage
• continuation of the University of Cincinnati's Microsoft site license so that all community members may get the new Vista operating system when it becomes available
• UC Mobile
  - including a WiFi Hot Zone for UC and its environs, available for guest access at no cost
  - text messaging course notifications to students
• increased security protections for the community
  - the new UCID replacing the SSN for campus use
  - the institution of new security awareness programs and safeguards 

Details on these are contained in this issue.

Some have asked why UCit is not forced to reduce services in the light of UC's budget cuts, sometimes phrasing it 'doesn't UCit have to take the same cuts as everyone else?' The answer to the latter is yes; we take the same cut, and the larger cut customarily levied on 'non-academic' units. In fact, over the past eight years, UCit's budget has remained nearly constant in unadjusted dollars (and including mandated salary increases) so has been reduced in real dollars even as the demand for IT services has increased. While we have eliminated several positions not directly related to providing services, that cannot narrow the budget gap sufficiently. I hear sometimes that the reason we can deal with budget cuts so well is that prices for hardware and software have declined or that we raise rates. The former is true but inapplicable, the latter is simply false.

Those of us in IT realize some financial advantages that others do not in that some of our basic costs are declining, such as the cost of telecommunications lines and some computing hardware (like the basic PC workstations and storage). But the dramatically increased demand for and utilization of IT services negates any net savings. For example, compared to FY 2001 we now pay 75% less per Mb of Internet bandwidth, but require six times the bandwidth, resulting in a 56% greater expense.

Rates for those services for which we recharge users (phone and data) have not increased in three years. We have even reduced some rates, such as for voicemail (even as we added voice activated directory services last year). Less than half of our total budget is recharged. Servoces including computer labs, Blackboard, One Stop, UniverSIS (registration, billing, course reports, etc.) and the UC web environment are general funded services.

A strategic business practice that enables us to deal with budget cuts is that just as an academic unit in the research university should be bringing in external funding, so do we. UCit brings in nearly a million dollars a year in external funding - from sources as varied as eight other Ohio universities (Blackboard hosting, videoconferencing, webcasting and disaster recovery backup sites), several K-16 systems, Children's Hospital, the Cincinnati Board of Health, Stratford and University Park Apartments, and others. The new UC Mobile initiative will also produce extramural revenue. UC encourages and values entrepreneurial activities, and not in academics alone. I do not say this defensively, but take pride that the community beyond UC values our services just as the UC community does. That translates into revenue streams for us which can be used to partially compensate for reduced state funding.

| next article |

Return to the Fall 2006 index.