I. Current Staffing Allocations for Information Management and Administrative Systems

This appendix shows May 2008 staffing levels for the development, maintenance, and support of UW information management and administrative systems and services managed by the Office of Information Management (OIM) and the supporting technical infrastructure managed by UW Technology.

OIM directs information management and administrative systems throughout the UW and is responsible for the development, maintenance, and support of central administrative applications and information management services. For more information about OIM see: http://www.washington.edu/uwit/im/

UW Technology provides information technology, networking, and services to the UW community. UW Technology is responsible for the infrastructure that supports the UW’s central administrative applications. For more information about UW Technology see: http://www.washington.edu/uwit/

Included on this page:

• Staffing Support for Information Management and Administrative Systems
• Staff Allocation by Activity Type
• Overview of Functional Areas
• Staff Allocation by Functional Area
• Staffing Support for Technical Infrastructure

Staffing Support for Information Management and Administrative Systems

STAFF ALLOCATION BY ACTIVITY TYPE

OIM staff support for information management and administrative systems (IM/AS) is allocated among the following three activities:

• Production Support refers to work that keeps the systems running on a daily basis, including response to time-critical issues such as program logic errors and data exceptions. Production support staff deals with issues as they arise to keep the systems running correctly.
• Maintenance includes projects that adapt the system to changes in business rules and to new externally or internally mandated requirements. It also includes projects that implement process improvements, keep the systems technically current, and fix non-critical bugs.
• Development includes activities that extend existing processes, add new functionality, or convert existing processes to new technology.

The following chart shows how staff time is allocated between production support, maintenance, and development activities.

OVERVIEW OF FUNCTIONAL AREAS

As of September 2008, the Office of Information Management employs 94.5 staff in direct support of UW information management and administrative systems in the following functional areas:

• Information Management
• Application Integration Services
• Decision Support Services
• Administrative Systems
• Finance
• Student
• Human Resources/Payroll
• Alumni/Development
• University Services
• Application Processing and Coordination
• Project Support
• Project Services
• Portfolio Management

The following chart shows how staffing resources are allocated among the functional areas. The Administrative Systems area includes strategic projects such as the Financial Desktop Initiative (FDI) and Electronic Faculty Effort and Cost Sharing (eFECS). The Project Support area is comprised of project services staff, including those that provide portfolio management support and services such as usability, technical documentation, and project support.

STAFF ALLOCATION BY FUNCTIONAL AREA

The following section provides more detail on OIM staffing allocations for each functional area.

Information Management Functional Areas

Application Integration Services

Application Integration Services provides consistent and integrated data across subject areas and spanning the life cycle of activities. It also provides support for distributed application development using service-oriented techniques.

Decision Support Services

Decision Support Services provides development and support for the Enterprise Data Warehouse and business intelligence and analytical tools for timely access to data for decision making.

Administrative Systems Functional Areas

Finance Systems

The finance systems include central financial accounting, budgeting, procurement, and payables. These systems are driven by transaction input from business users across the University. On average, 200,000 transactions are accepted each month from business users. An additional 300,000 are accepted from central office staff and other interfacing systems. This base of 500,000 transactions is “exploded” into an average of 2.2 million records each month (i.e., for each single-entry transaction, the system might generate numerous “back-side” transactions). In addition, transaction numbers climb even higher during peaks in processing that occur during fiscal closing, salary revisions, and other high-demand periods. The procurement systems support requisitions and payment for goods and services totaling over $1.1 billion per year. The JDE Grants Receivables system takes in $1.1 billion per year from grant sponsors.

UW users access financial transaction data and reports through the Web-based My Financial Desktop application.

Student Systems

The student systems support core student administrative functions such as admissions, registration, permanent records, financial aid, and tuition collection, as well as many ancillary functions. The student systems retain the official academic records for 761,000 UW students—every student who has attended the UW since 1981. The Web-based student registration system handles over 500 transactions each minute during peak registration periods. The student systems generally account for 60 to 75 percent of the total daily load of 200,000 to 900,000 transactions on the administrative mainframe.

HR/Payroll Systems

In a typical two-week payroll cycle, The HR/payroll systems distribute $60 million in pay to the University’s 35,000 employees. The HR/payroll systems pay out $1.6 billion annually—85 percent to direct deposit—and distribute 50,000 W-2's each year.

University Services

The University Services functional area includes the administrative systems used by Facilities Services, Transportation, Environmental Health and Safety, UW Technology, and other units.

Applications Processing and Coordination

The Applications Processing and Coordination functional area supports batch processing and report production for all of the administrative systems supported.

Alumni/Development System

The alumni/development system supports the computing needs of University Advancement through the SunGard BSR Advance system. It also supports a locally developed reporting application and customized interfaces to other UW administrative systems. The alumni/development system processed 110,000 gifts in the last two weeks of “Campaign UW: Creating Futures” and recorded a total of $2.68 billion in donations during the eight-year campaign.

Project Services Functional Areas

Project Services

Project Services provides project management, quality assurance, technical writing, and usability services for enterprise-wide projects. Staffing for the strategic projects such as FDI and eFECS are accounted for in the Administrative Systems Functional Area.

Portfolio Management

Portfolio Management includes support for project intake, oversight, and prioritization that achieves the right mix of tactical and strategic projects for the UW.

Staffing Support for Technical Infrastructure

UW Technology employs 23.8 staff members to support the technical infrastructure for the University’s administrative systems and information management services. This infrastructure includes:

• Servers, storage, and other hardware
• Operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Server, UNIX, and Unisys Clearpath MCP
• Database management systems including Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, Informix, and Unisys DMSII
• Application, management, and monitoring tools

The infrastructure staff provides the following support:

• Application support and engineering—focusing primarily on the Windows Server environment, providing in-depth consulting expertise in new and emerging aspects of this environment, as well as support for integrating best-of-breed packages such as Ariba and JD Edwards.
  
• Database administration—supporting the design, implementation, and operation of database environments across multiple server platforms.

• Windows/UNIX infrastructure—involving the specification, installation, configuration, and ongoing support of several hundred Windows and Unix servers.
  
• Storage Services—focusing on the management of enterprise disk storage and backup services across all administrative system environments.
  
• MCP infrastructure—involving the configuration, monitoring, and ongoing support of the mainframe systems that service numerous core administrative applications. This area also serves as a technical consulting resource for the mainframe environment and supports environmental and operational software such as job scheduling and tape management.
  
• Identity and Access Management—critical to ensuring easy and convenient access to Web-based resources and services and a consistent user experience. It provides the infrastructure necessary to enable use of a single user identification and password to log on to most systems, access to appropriate resources, and support for portal services that tailor content to each individual user.
  
• Outreach—ensures that UW Technology engineering services and expertise are successfully applied in support of the University of Washington's mission. Helps to establish and build collaborative relationships with customers, vendors, administrators, and other technical units.
  
• MyUW Portal—a portal for accessing a wide variety of UW information and services, including student and employee personal information. MyUW provides access to specially tailored Web resources based on roles at the University and personal preferences.

 

The following chart shows how the infrastructure support staff currently is allocated.