The university's chief information officer presented the findings of an independent consulting firm to the Board of Trustees Friday to make his case for increasing information technology funding.
About $7 million to $10 million is needed to make basic staffing, emergency planning, security and network improvements, said Brice Bible, chief information officer. The current IT budget is $12 million and next year's plan is set to increase that by $1.5 million.
Bible said he hopes to have the $7 million to $10 million in two to three years.
A report by Gartner Consulting of Stamford, Conn., found that Ohio University spends $7.4 million less than the bottom 25 percent of its university peers on IT services and also employs fewer people to manage those services. Bible said he based his estimates on the report and his observations as CIO.
Filling 17 critical technical positions will cost $2.5 million, Bible said. Four technical-compliance management and 10 to 15 service and support staff are also needed at a total cost of up to $2 million.
I'm going to hit the street finding those (people) right now
Bible said. I'd love to have those 17 positions in place sometime during the first part of the fiscal year and certainly before the end of the calendar year.
Competitive pay is a necessity if the university plans to retain qualified IT staff, Bible said.
Josh Thomas, former chief information security officer, recently left the university to take a job at the Online Computer Library Center in Dublin, Ohio. Having a new security director within a year is one of the goals outlined in Bible's presentation.
We do not have a solid business continuity plan or disaster recover plan Bible said. Although the university ships tapes containing important information off campus, IT wouldn't be able to easily access that backup data.
If God forbid
something happens to the central data centers
we have tapes offsite
Trustee C. David Snyder sarcastically said. Whoopee dingG? we could use them for Frisbees.
Bible estimated that an off-site backup facility for disaster recovery would cost the university at least $250,000 each year.
After information security breaches exposed 360,000 alumni donor and medical records to hackers last year, the IT department began eliminating routine uses for personal information. Classifying information by sensitivity is the next step in securing personal data, Bible said.
The $20 million cost of a new student information system isn't included in Bible's $7 million to $10 million estimate.
We're asking for trouble if we don't we have a stable infrastructure underneath (the new SIS)
Bible said.
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