THE TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE INITIATIVES

FACT SHEET
Revised 9/18/97

In 1994, the CSU Presidents determined it was essential for all CSU faculty, students and staff to have at least baseline access to the appropriate technology infrastructure by the year 2000 if the CSU and its universities were to be competitive. In keeping with this goal, CSU's Integrated Technology Strategy (ITS) was developed. One of the key components of the ITS is the formation of a public/private partnership to provide the prerequisite technology infrastructure in an affordable and timely way. This infrastructure effort has been driven by all CSU campuses represented by the Systemwide Internal Partnership (SIP.) Faculty, students and staff played an active role in the ITS planning phase and advised the SIP team that their basic need for network connections, access to hardware, software, training and support must be the first issue addressed. These basic needs form the baseline Technology Infrastructure Initiatives (TII).

Proposals from three major corporate teams were considered, and on September 15, 1997 the CSU selected one team with which to partner. This team, called "CETI," is made up of GTE, Fujitsu, Hughes Communications and Microsoft. This team will work with the CSU to develop implementation plans and reach agreement on them by December. Actual implementation will commence in January of 1998. (CETI stands for California Education Technology Initiative.)

• The ITS strategy is a comprehensive, long-range plan which begins with the near simultaneous introduction of needed technology at all CSU campuses. It is designed to provide all faculty, students and staff the competitive advantage of a technology-enhanced education by providing a more complete range of technology-related services.
• The TII partnership is a combined public/private endeavor designed to help CSU become technologically competitive at a time when traditional resources are not available to fund the large amount of capital needed for CSU's technology needs.
• The CSU faces other serious funding gaps such as faculty salaries, deferred maintenance, capital improvement and enrollment funding. As a result, the $200-300 million cost of the TII is unlikely to be provided fully by the state.
• Through the proposed TII partnership, the technology funding gap has the potential of being partially closed thereby helping to ease the competition for the remaining available dollars, benefiting CSU, its faculty, students and staff.
• With ITS/TII in place, all CSU students, faculty and staff will be able to communicate with one another and interact with information resources from anywhere to anywhere at any time of the day or night.
• The CSU's partnership negotiating team is charged with the formation of the TII while supporting the interests of CSU employees. CSU's first negotiating principle clearly communicated to the potential partners that CSU staff will be retained by the CSU. The partners are eager to have CSU's current, talented personnel as part of the team and foresee no near-term job losses within the CSU. Nevertheless, the wide use of technology will ultimately change job descriptions and assignments with or without a systemwide partnership.
• Some CSU campuses already possess the infrastructure needed to provide adequate (or better) access, support, or training to their students, faculty and staff. But no one campus currently provides all three adequately. As a result, the CSU is not making and cannot make full use of its educational resources. ITS/TII will bring access, support and training to all CSU students, faculty and staff, enhancing the educational resources of the campuses both individually and collectively.
• There is strength and economy of scale in numbers. Further, no campus will suffer "irreparable harm" from participating in the TII partnership. If a campus believes it can accomplish the ITS/TII objectives at a better price/performance than can the partnership, the partnership will be required to match or better the price/performance of the campus' plan.
• Under the SIP negotiating principles exclusivity may be enforced for goods and services within the scope of the partnership agreement, but it is not a consideration for goods and services outside that scope.
• The selected partnership must compete with other entities for the business of providing goods and services which lie outside the scope of the common environment.
• If the partnership for TII is developed as planned, the ability of CSU campuses to generate gifts, donations and grants for a wide range of academic program needs will be enhanced. Donors today are seeking institutions with academic departments and faculty who already have the basic technology infrastructure capabilities locally and systemwide so they can invest in the development of applications using technology to advance learning and scholarship. In fact, donors tend to invest in the "the margin of excellence" rather than in basic needs.

Our new partners have long, successful and well-established histories of support, collaboration and leadership within the education arena. Each has long-standing relationships with the CSU and is familiar with the academic world.

Visits to seven CSU campuses by representatives of the CETI team have given them additional firsthand exposure to the CSU's academic and corporate culture. As part of each visit, CSU faculty members met with these representatives to provide them with a realistic understanding of CSU's culture.

CSU's SIP Team also held a series of meetings with Presidents and campus and system executive management and other constituencies including the Academic Senate, CSSA, Information Resource Management Program Designees, (IRM) and others seeking their input and active involvement in the development and implementation of ITS/TII.

In keeping with CSU's culture, the university will maintain a controlling interest in governing the partnership. CSU identifies a good business relationship as one based on a sound educational mission that serves the needs of the CSU and its corporate partners.

CSU's guidelines on intellectual property will remain in place. The CSU has made it clear it will NOT negotiate away any academic freedoms, choices or control of curriculum content.

Data Center consolidation is not included in the scope of the proposals. However, the CETI partners have requested the opportunity to offer these services to improve capabilities and cover some of the costs of the infrastructure build-out.

Both the CETI partners and the CSU are motivated to succeed by a desire to garner revenues to support their respective objectives. While the CSU does not share directly in the profit motive of the private sector partners, CSU and its campuses are increasingly required to generate alternative funding sources to sustain core programs and the CSU mission. CSU is accountable to its stakeholders for the tax revenues and student fees it receives while business is held accountable to stockholders for the "bottom line".

The CSU and the private sector also share an understanding of the absolute need for a well-educated workforce. CSU is the supplier of the personnel who will (or should be) the competitive edge for these companies in the future. Business understands that without CSU graduates they will be severely hampered in the future. This does not mean that the partners will forego their profit motive, but it does mean they will work with CSU to forge a mutually beneficial relationship.

The success and benefits of ITS/TII will be measured by how well the partnership provides each and every CSU student, faculty and staff the appropriate inter- and intra-campus networking, and access to hardware/software, training and support to be individually and collectively productive in their respective roles.

The ultimate criterion for judging the success of the TII strategy is whether every student, faculty member and staff has access to technology infrastructure and whether that infrastructure can be sustained and refreshed on an ongoing basis. This will be documented by a methodology currently being developed by one of the SIP teams which will compare past and current IT resources and their cost against those which will be provided as part of the ITS/TII partnership.

NOTE: The SIP Communication Team produces a weekly ITS Update which has a wide distribution. An interactive "listserv", called ITS INSIGHT, has been created for questions and answers about TII. (To subscribe, send an e-mail message to LISTSERVER@calstate.edu. Leave the subject line blank. In the body of the message, type SUBSCRIBE ITSINSIGHT, followed by your FIRSTNAME and LASTNAME. Please don't use any hyphens or underlines, just the four words you see here in capital letters.)

A Web site has also been created which contains up-to-date information on the Systemwide Internal Partnership. The URL is http://its.calstate.edu/sip.

Finally, the team has asked each President and SIP representative to actively ensure that faculty, students and other stakeholders are frequently provided with timely information on partnership development.