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IET reduces budget by $1.46 million
05/30/2008
Information and Educational Technology, shouldering its share of the UC Davis spending cuts required for 2008-09, has decreased its budget by $1.46 million.
To meet this target, IET identified reductions based on the best interests of the campus and an attempt to preserve core services for faculty, staff and students.
"We took a risk-assessment approach, and focused on preserving programs and services critical to faculty, students and staff--and protecting initiatives such as SmartSite and UCDNet3, the six-year upgrade to the campus telecommunications network," said Dave Shelby, assistant vice provost for IET.
Nevertheless, the IET budget reductions represent difficult decisions, and include curtailing and eliminating some services.
"We had to reduce a number of programs, which will unfortunately have a significant impact on the campus," he said. "This challenge was made all the more difficult by the magnitude of the campus's budget reduction and the increasing reliance on information technology by virtually all parts of the campus."
The current plan would cut the equivalent of about 13 full-time jobs, ranging from assistants to senior managers. Other savings would come from streamlined administration and renegotiated vendor contracts. Some cuts are expected to be immediate, while others will need to be implemented over a longer period to ensure an orderly transition and, hopefully, help ease the impact on faculty, staff and students.
Reductions in staff positions are expected to affect services or increase response times in various areas. Examples from the current plan range from programming and software licensing coordination, to photo and special events services, night crew tech service and classroom repairs, and phone bill administration.
IET's plans are available to the campus community. This consultation process started May 12 when the Campus Council for Information Technology heard IT-related budget-cut presentations from IET and other campus units. IET shared a list of measures it proposes to implement, starting as early as July 1.
"We are well along in the process of sharing and reviewing the anticipated impacts of the proposed cuts with key campus groups," Shelby said. "Although the timing did not allow for the kind of extensive consultation we would prefer, we are committed to fully understanding the impacts of the IET reductions. We know that many of the cuts will have significant impacts on the campus, and we are committed to fully understanding these impacts so that we can move forward in the most thoughtful way possible."
These reductions come amid general concern about lessening investments in technology, and reduce IET's capacity to develop new services or keep pace with the level of support the campus expects and deserves. "Much of the $1.46 million represents resources that IET would have redeployed to help address those needs," Shelby said.
Overall, UC Davis has asked deans, vice chancellors and vice provosts to pare general fund and registration fee fund spending by more than $17.5 million. The campus will also assign additional one-time cuts of $10 million to $20 million to fully close the expected gap for 2008-09.
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