e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: ERP

  • University of California’s $220 million payroll project reboot

    Chris Newfield has an excellent post at Remaking the University about the University of California’s budget situation and how it relates to the recent Moody’s negative outlook on higher education finances. The whole article is worth reading, but one section jumped off the page for me [emphasis added].

    The sadder example of ongoing debt is the request for “external financing for the UCPath project.” UC Path was UCOP’s flagship solution to UC inefficiencies that were allegedly wasting taxpayers’ money–in other words, new enterprise software for the systemwide consolidation of payroll and human resources functions. This is boring, important back office stuff, hardly good material for a political campaign to show the state “UC means business,” but that’s what it became. Rather than funding each campus’s decades-old effort to upgrade its systems on its own, UCOP sought centralization, which predictably introduced new levels of cost, complexity, and inefficiency, since centralization is often not actually efficient.

    I had heard nothing good about UC Path from people trying to implement it on campuses, and have tried to ignore it, but this week it has resurfaced as a problem at the Regental level. The project timeline has grown from 48 to 72 months, and its costs are said to be $220 million (it had spent $131 million by May 2014) . Worse, the repayment schedule has mushroomed from seven to twenty years. Annual payments are to be something like $25 million. Campuses are to be taxed to pay for 2015-era systems until 2035, which is like taking out a twenty year mortgage to pay for your refrigerator, except that your fridge will be working better in 2035 than next year’s PeopleSoft product. Since the concurrent budget document notes efficiency savings of $30 million per year (top of page 4), UCOP may be spending $220 million to save a net $5 million per year over a couple of decades–and going into debt to do it. In the end, an efficiency measure has turned into a literal liability.

    What the hell – a $220 million project to save money? How did this project get in this much trouble?

    (more…)

  • Kuali: A Primer for Community Source Administrative Systems in Higher Ed

    I was recently invited to attend a user conference – Kuali Days in Austin, TX – and was struck by the disconnect between Kuali’s relatively low profile and the excitement expressed by the institutional representatives attending the conference. Before getting to any analysis of Kuali and its prospects, however, I need to lay out the basics to help me keep the terminology straight.

    My focus in consulting and writing is on educational technology – those systems that directly impact a student’s educational needs. While there are a range of administrative systems within the Kuali portfolio of projects, I will place more emphasis on those systems which are closer to the student experience.

    Based on interviews at the conference, the core value that Kuali provides are:

    • Administrative systems designed for specific needs (for higher education, by higher education); and
    • Dramatically lower hard costs for administrative systems.

    What is the Kuali Project and Foundation?

    In 2004, a group of technologists were looking to collaborate on a shareable Financial System based on a homegrown system designed at Indiana University. Within the CIC (a forum for technology collaboration mostly amongst the former Big 10 schools), there were several discussions about the nature of sharing. Even though the source code and design would be shared, who would own the software and intellectual property? Who would manage common development? These questions led to the concept of a third-party organization.

    The Kuali Project was created in early 2005 based on founding partners Indiana University, The University of Arizona, the University of Hawaii, Michigan State University, San Joaquin Delta Community College, Cornell University, NACUBO and the rSmart Group.

    (more…)