1. Introduction

1.1. Task Force Objectives

The Task Force on Information Technology Resources was formed to examine telecommunications and computing activities of the University of Florida, and to develop a plan which:

• Allows the University to respond faster to needs for information resources. þ Focuses University activities in information technology resources and encourages cost-effective use.
• Allows the University to use its computing and telecommunications strengths to address the needs of the next decade.
• Clearly states the commitment needed by the University if advances in the use of information technology resources by faculty, staff, and students are to be made.

Inherent in the discussions which follow is the assumption that the following trends in information and communications technology will continue.

1. The computer as primary tool for academic and administrative work.

The cost of computer hardware and software continues to decrease, while the capabilities and variety of these systems continue to increase. New and innovative uses for computer technology in instruction, research, and administration will continue to help increase the productivity of faculty, staff, and students. Academic and administrative units will continue to purchase new computer technology, forcing the University to address the issues of maintenance and management of this technology. Increasing individual productivity through computer technology and networking is one way the University can reduce the impact of increasing labor costs.

2. Computer networks as key to access to information and services.

The emerging model for computing in the 1990s involves having a flexible high-speed network at the core. Academics are becoming more reliant on connections to University, national, and international computer networks for access to colleagues, information, and services. The need for interconnecting computers of faculty, staff, and students will continue to grow, placing demands on the University to provide appropriate computer networking infrastructures. Computer networks, along with facsimile machines, have revolutionized the way University documents are transmitted. New computer networks, being installed or planned, will open up new ways of handling information.

As computers have decreased in size and increased in capability, and as computer network speeds increase, more tasks previously possible only on a mainframe computer are being performed on networked workstations. File sharing, document exchange, and processor resource sharing are all being performed on campus today. This trend toward a more distributed approach to processing and file storage is well advanced and one which is expected to become the standard model for all computing. The University needs to acknowledge this development and incorporate a distributed computing model into its planning for services and support.

4. The continued need for mainframe and supercomputing services.

Select numerically-intensive computing projects requiring the speed and capability of the mainframe and/or supercomputer are important in a number of academic disciplines. While national supercomputer centers accessed over national computer networks can satisfy part of this need, it is clear that universities will be required to supply a growing demand for supercomputer services. The size of the databases needed to run the University requires the speed, reliability, and security of mainframe-based file systems and the ability to handle large numbers of simultaneous users.

Voice, video, and data networking can occur over one medium. The benefits of providing all three services over one medium dictate that combined networking will be a practical reality in the near future. Solutions that combine services, such as broadband ISDN, are not currently commercially available but commercial solutions are being actively studied and will be available in the near future.

As students continue to be exposed to computers in grades K through 12, the University can expect to see more students arriving here with personal computing systems. Currently students majoring in many disciplines buy their own computers in order to be competitive in their course work. Eventually all students will need personal computers. Where we now expect students to supply their own paper, pencils, and calculators, in the future students will be required to supply their own computers.

Use of computers in the classroom will grow slowly and be limited by classrooms incapable of allowing effective use of technology and by the inability of students to obtain access to appropriate computing. Development of computer aided instruction programs will continue but at a slow pace due to continued uncertainty as to how to effectively integrate computers with more traditional instruction.

8. Computer software developed for only the newest technology.

As new computer and networking technologies emerge, computer software will be developed to take advantage of these new technologies. As software becomes more reliant on new technology, older computer hardware and networks will not be capable of running this software and will need to be phased out. The desire to run new and more capable software is the driving force behind the purchase of most new computers today. This trend has serious impact on how the University will plan for funding information technology in the future.

Given the dynamic nature of computing and networking technology, and the diverse needs of user at the University, it is not desirable, nor really cost effective, to limit the computing and networking environment to a small set of hardware and software systems. University policies and plans must accommodate diversity in hardware and software. Standards are still necessary, but they must be dynamic and reflect advanced computing and networking practice within and outside the institution.

10. The increasing sophistication of users.

Users are becoming more familiar with computer technologies and networking. Users have begun to make greater use of the full capabilities of today’s software, a trend which is driving requirements for more processing power on the desk. As this trend continues, we can expect to see increasing demands being placed on services to support these users, as well as increasing demands on networks to accommodate increased information flow.

As the University of Florida has grown in the last twenty-five years, so have its information technology resources. Prior to 1973, most computing was the responsibility of data processing shops in the Registrar’s office, Finance and Accounting, and the University Computing Center. With the introduction of minicomputers in the mid-1970s, computing began to decentralize. The general introduction of the microcomputer in the late 1970s and early 1980s further encouraged decentralization to the point that today every unit on campus, however small, has some collection of microcomputer equipment at its disposal.

During this time, efforts have been made to coordinate the delivery of administrative information to major administrative units. The offices of Academic and Administrative Affairs have provided the leadership for this coordination. These efforts concentrated primarily on the technical and logistical problems of providing terminals and connectivity to administrative users. Much less time has been spent on developing comprehensive and flexible administrative databases and information retrieval tools. Until recently, the computing technology was not capable of supporting extensive database development. In general, resources and time for planning and implementing a more comprehensive and usable administrative information system have not been available, with most administrative information providers using all available resources to keep up with ever-increasing demands.

Efforts have also been made to coordinate academic use of computing for research instruction, and public service (extension). These efforts have concentrated on providing training to faculty and computer labs for student use. Services and training for faculty, staff, and students in the purchase, maintenance, and use of computers have been described as minimal to non- existent. These problems were pointed out in the Webb report (A Plan for Student Access to Instructional Computing, 1984), which proposed a plan for moving forward on these issues. Since the Webb report, some progress has been made in implementing the more technical recommendations, but service and support levels remain far below recommended levels.

The rapid growth of high-speed computer networking has only exacerbated the problems related to services and planning. Networking computers has been shown to increase worker productivity, increase the effective lifetime of computer equipment, and enhance communication among users. Units have networked their installed computers despite a general lack of technology professionals on campus who understand how to acquire and operate networks, and the generally unavailability of these individuals to help specific units. Unlike the experiences with microcomputers in the early 1980s, few administrators are now willing to divert faculty and staff to network design and management. Instead, unit managers are looking for additional resources to fund management positions or are looking to the University to provide support for computing as part of the University infrastructure. The lack of support has led to delays, frustration, lost productivity, and inefficient use of resources.

While substantial networking growth has occurred on campus and among off-campus units, most of this effort has been technology-driven. A 1986 consultants report on University networking ( A Communications Network Plan for the University of Florida, 1986) described the communications environment as "far-reaching, but disjoint" and "a collection of components". Until recently, the campus backbone network did not connect to a sufficient fraction of University buildings to be considered comprehensive. Very little effort has been expended toward delivery of services. The University libraries have not been major participants in the campus network, and the major libraries are only now being connected. Administrative information users utilize the network primarily as a high speed communications line for terminal sessions on the mainframe computer. Developers have not utilized the distributed computing capabilities of the network, primarily because most administrative workstations are inadequate.

Despite its apparent shortcomings, the University’s computing and networking environment is dynamic, flexible, and populated with many capable people. The annual investment made by all units will have to be increased and better managed if the University is to stay competitive as a major research and education center. The process begins with better coordination of existing support service units, better allocation of existing resources, and better planning for the future. In the sections which follow, the Task Force has recommended actions which, if implemented, will enhance coordination and management, placing the University in a position to better utilize information technology to meet the demands of research, instruction, public service, and administration. Unless these actions are taken, the problems will only increase, soon reducing the ability of the University to perform at the level demanded of a public higher education and research institution in the 1990s.

It is estimated that in fiscal year 1989-90 the University of Florida spent roughly $52.5 million in direct support of information technology. This represents about 5% of the total budget of the University for that year. Of this $52.5 million, $34.9 million (66%) was in the E&G budget, $6.2 million ( 12%) in IFAS, and $11.4 million ( 22%) in the Health Sciences Center. Long distance and local exchange telephone services account for $4.8 million (9%), NERDC mainframe and communication services account for roughly $6.5 million (12%). Major projects, as identified, in the Information Resources Management report for 1989-90, account for $8.2 million (16%)with $0.91 million (2%)of this being spent on major projects in telephony and networking.

Many staff having information technology responsibilities are not in established information technology services or support units and hence are not covered in the $52.5 million amount. Current accounting practice makes it impossible to identify all funds spent on information technology-associated materials, such as microcomputer software, parts, and paper. The fraction of the total which goes to administrative applications development, to administrative production processing, and academic computing is not easily obtained.

No attempt has been made in this report to define comprehensively the existing information technology resources of the University. The consultants report on communication networks ( A Communications Network Plan for the University of Florida 1986) took nineteen pages to describe the University’s resources in 1986. A similar report for 1991 would require at least three times that many pages, and would probably still miss many important components. The major information technology services units were identified by the Task Force in the early stages of discussion, and unit managers provided detailed reports on resources, practices, and budgets assigned to these units. This information formed the foundation for initial discussions by the Task Force.

Three major groups of information technology users were considered by the Task Force: academic users, administrative users, and applications developers/support providers Academic users include those faculty, staff, and students who use information technology in the performance of research, instruction, and service activities. Academic users can be further subdivided into those who simply use the computer to compose documents or seek information, and those who use the computational capabilities of the computer. The class of computational academic users includes the numerically intensive computing user who requires access to supercomputers to perform effective research and instruction.

Administrative users are primarily University staff, but include many faculty and students who rely on information technology resources to perform the recordkeeping and accounting activities of the business of the university. Administrative users are not easily subdivided into clear sub-dasses, primarily because administrative staff require access to the full range of information in the performance of their duties. A number of administrative users deal primarily with student records and advisement, and depend on the databases prepared by the Registrar’s office. Another group of administrative users deal exclusively with the business transactions and accounting databases prepared by the various units of Administrative Affairs. Administrative staff in the colleges and departments are very likely to deal regularly with both of these types of information.

Applications developers/support providers include those computing and networking technicians who create and support software and databases for the academic and administrative users. By far, the largest organized group of developers exists to support administrative applications. These individuals are found in the departments which supply the major databases, namely the Registrar’s office, Student Financial Aid, Administrative Affairs, Academic Affairs, IFAS and the Health Center, as well as in the major resource provider units such as NERDC and CIRCA.

In attempting to understand the current computing and networking environment, the Task Force looked at two things. First, we looked for activities where better coordination and/or consolidation of providers of services would lead to more effective support and economies of scale. Second, we attempted to identify strategic services or functions which are not at present provided or supported at all or are only sparsely covered. The University must provide new resources if progress is to be made providing these strategic services.

When coordination is recommended, the objective is the integration of activities or functions into a system which is capable of providing services or information to users efficiently and effectively. The result of coordination is an increase in access to support, training, and technology by users in colleges and administrative units. While there are valid reasons why certain units may require more support than others, increased coordination among service providers is necessary to ensure some basic level of access to support for all.

When consolidation is recommended, the objective is to bring together individuals engaged in delivering very similar services under one management. Consolidation is a more drastic step than coordination, so it is recommended only when there are dear benefits to having one unit. Consolidation is recommended to increase the comprehensibility of the system to users, to increase the productivity of existing service providers, or to allow the targeting of individuals to strategic programs. Consolidation also allows the University to take advantage of other economies of scale.