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FSEC discusses computer ‘refreshment’ policy
By MARY COCHRANE
Contributing Editor
A new computer for every employee every four years? Sounds like a campaign pledge, but it's the goal of Peter Rittner, assistant dean for educational technology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and his UB workstation standardization team.
The team—composed of representatives from schools, departments and other units throughout the university—began in spring 2006 looking at ways to improve technological service to UB faculty and staff, while at the same time saving money for the university, Rittner told the Faculty Senate Executive Committee yesterday.
"Our most important goal was to improve service by enabling additional support for instruction and research. This has to do with a phrase that has run through much of the IT transformation, which is 'freeing capacity.' The idea is that if you can do the things we already do as IT support professionals on campus more efficiently and effectively, it will free up our time to do the things we're not now able to. In particular, we are concerned about the paucity of support for instruction and research on campus by IT professionals."
The team found that four years is the optimum period of time for "refreshing" employee workstations by supplying them with "new" computer hardware and software upgrades, Rittner said.
This doesn't mean every UB employee will receive a brand-new, store-bought computer, he cautioned. As in the past, IT services would continue to recycle many machines that have been used by fellow UB employees for use in other departments.
It will be up to the administration to articulate a "systematic four-year refreshment cycle" policy that transcends issues that prevent this, "from personality to politics to the age of a faculty member to perceived productivity.
"If we had a policy that was asset-based and objective, all those issues would disappear and everybody would be given the equipment to do the work that they are expected to do," Rittner said.
Currently, UB owns between 16,500 and 18,000 computers "that are not dedicated to research," Rittner said.
"Many of those computers people do research on, but we have a set of computers specifically dedicated to research and they were not included in our survey," he said. "If we were to do a desktop refreshment based on persons rather than on computers, we would end up actually refreshing only about half of the computers that show up in that survey. That's an important fact because if you want to free IT staff time in order to enable them to do other things, we need to refresh all of the computers on campus because if half of them are still clunkers, then you are sucking up IT staff supporting older machines,"
Rittner and his colleagues recommend replacing 4,000 computers and software (or one-quarter of nonresearch computers) a year—each at the average cost of $1,500—which would cost $6 million annually.
The $1,500 price tag, which includes hardware and software for each workstation, was arrived at based on buying "a machine that you think will absorb the changes in technology adequately so it's not useless to somebody in the third or fourth year," he noted.
"UB could save hundreds of thousands of dollars by leveraging its buying power. That's what we don't do with the way we buy computers. We spent last year, through UB Micro, with Dell alone, between $6 and $7 million. So we're already spending $6 or $7 million a year and yet we bought that many computers through hundreds if not thousands of individual acquisitions. Why don't we buy them in large lots? You get very deep discounts," Rittner said.
He pointed out the College of Arts and Sciences buys its computers in bulk groups, albeit "modest" numbers of 60-100 computers at a time, yet that practice garners "discounts in the several hundreds of dollars range, per computer."
"If we could cut the average cost of acquisition by $200 for 4,000 machines per year, that's $800,000 that the institution would have for other purposes that it doesn't have right now," he said.
UB would be able to realize savings by purchasing the 4,000 computers in "several purchases annually."
"We don't envision buying 4,000 computers once a year, for all kinds of reasons, one of them being how do you deploy that many computers in a timely manner if they all arrive at the same time? Every day that a computer stays in its box is a day lost in the useful life of that computer. And there are storage problems in having 4,000 computers delivered and there are natural cycles in the life of the institution that you want to match up to, such as faculty arriving the beginning of the academic year or the beginning of the second semester," Rittner said.
The benefits of an aggregate purchase also would allow the university to purchase at optimal times of year in the vendor-incentive cycles "when you can get more aggressive price savings from vendors who are trying to meet end-of-quarter or end-of-year sales goals," according to Rittner, who said the team has submitted its report to the UB administration.
"The actual mechanics of how to do this are really dependent on senior administration decision-making, and that is ongoing."
Stella N. Batalama, associate professor of electrical engineering, said that having to delay purchasing a computer in order to get a deal might not sit well with some faculty and staff, to which Provost Satish K. Tripathi replied that buying the computers wouldn't have to be delayed because UB could receive discounts from the vendor "if a certain number of purchases is guaranteed."
In other business, Michael Ryan, vice provost and dean for undergraduate education, said he wants more faculty members to sign up to teach Discovery Seminars, which began last fall and are designed to provide semester-long, small-group experiences to first- and second-year UB students.
The program featured four seminars last fall, and has 18 seminars under way in the current semester. The fall 2007 slate includes 27 seminars so far and Ryan would like to see that number climb to 50.
Ryan also announced that the first two Undergraduate Academies—scholarly communities composed of faculty, students and staff with shared goals and interests—will roll out in fall 2007. The first is Civic Engagement, to be led by Peter M. Sobota, clinical assistant professor in the School of Social Work, and the second is Research Exploration, to be led by Tracy K. Gregg, associate professor of geology.
Two more academies will be added in Fall 2008: Creative Expression and Global and International Issues. Ryan asked that faculty members interested in teaching a seminar or leading or assisting with one of the academies contact him at 645-6003, or visit the Web sites at http://discoveryseminars.buffalo.edu and http://academy.buffalo.edu for more information.