Taking
lt All Online
If it can go online, UC Berkeley will make sure it goes online.
The university’s e-Berkeley initiative is combining education, business,
and campus community in bold new electronic contexts.
BY JAMES A. HYATT,
EIGHTY PERCENT OF FRESHMEN ENTERING UC BERKELEY THIS FALL USED
HELEN KELLY,
the university’s Online Admissions Decisions Web site to learn that
AND JON CONHAlM
they had been accepted. Fifty percent submitted their Statement of
Legal Residence online, and 60 percent electronically submitted
housing applications.
Welcome to e-Berkeley, a campus-wide initiative whose goal is to
use the Web to fundamentally transform the way the university
operates—from daily business functions to the central mission of
teaching and research.
The intent behind e-Berkeley is to ensure that all interaction for
students, faculty, staff, alumni, business partners, and the general
public is as “frictionless” as possible by making a multitude of
transactions available via the Internet. But e-Berkeley is much more
than e-business as usual; e-Berkeley is designed to build trust and
collaboration among everyone involved with the university and the
public through new forms of technology-enabled learning and
interaction.
26 • OCTOBER 2002
NACUBO BUSINESS OFFICER • 27
The Birth of e-Berkeley
While many campuses have projects that focus on specific
administrative or student activities, e-Berkeley encompasses
all aspects of university life. Specific projects involve streamlining access to course information and content, collecting farflung campus services and functions in easily accessible portal
Web sites tailored to the needs of each community, and reducing paperwork by putting more information services and
transactions online.
When announced in the fall of 2000, the eBerkeley initiative was defined as an openended project, guided by the needs and input
Because e-Berkeley projects are new applications, long-term customer satisfacof UC Berkeley students, faculty, staff, alumni,
tion won’t be available for some time. However, initial project applications have
and business partners. Among the initial projbeen heavily used, and the early and overwhelming acceptance of these applicaects approved for funding are these:
tions seems to indicate the campus community’s satisfaction with UC Berkeley’s
• WebCast delivers streaming video of camnew Web-oriented environment. Highlighted below are some of the striking measpus lectures and special events via the Web.
urements of e-Berkeley’s initial success.
• Graduate Admissions System allows
applicants to complete electronic applicaProject
Satisfaction Statistics
tions and to pay fees online by credit card.
e-Grades
In Spring 2002, 73% of semester course
• e-Grades allows course instructors to
grades were reported to the registrar’s office
report course grades to the Office of the
via e-Grades, up from 46% in Spring 2001.
Registrar by using a Web application to
upload grades from Excel files on their PCs.
Graduate Admissions System
For the 2002-03 admissions cycle, 16,000
Students can view their grades from the eapplications were submitted online, representGrades site within 24 hours.
ing 72% of all graduate applications (up dra•
e-Travel is designed to expedite travel reimmatically from 32% in 2001-02). As a result,
bursement for the campus community and
the admissions office reduced temporary staff
to provide information about reimburseby one employee.
ment status.
WebCast
In Spring 2002, WebCast was used in 15 cours• Learning Management System allows
es with 3,244 enrolled and with streaming
instructors to develop sites with minimal
videos of lectures viewed 176,736 times.
effort that include class schedules and locations, instructor office hours, and course
Paperless Payment System
In 2002, Paperless Payment handled 3,274
syllabi. The system also provides instructors
online credit card payments for graduate
with current course rosters and the ability
school applications, including 1,200 during the
to e-mail enrolled and wait-listed students.
final 24 hours prior to payment deadline. The
•
Paperless Payment System is a centrally supsystem also handled 470 e-Parking online
ported secure system for processing credit
credit card transactions and 1,200 transactions
card payments from campus Web sites. This
for University Relations’ e-Giving Web site.
system is currently collecting payment for
e-Parking
A total of 1,534 faculty and staff parking perdiverse services ranging from graduate stumits (50% of those eligible) were renewed via
dent application fees to university fundraising
the e-Parking site; 695 student parking permits
contributions to parking permits.
were purchased online in Spring 2002; and 222
• System and Network Security Office is
parking citations were paid online during the
responsible for monitoring all campus comfirst three weeks of service.
puting activities to detect network break-ins
and attempted break-ins.
The idea for e-Berkeley grew from a visit made by UC Berkeley
Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl and his cabinet to Cisco
Systems. During discussion of the university’s use of the Web
in its business and teaching missions, it quickly became clear
to university leaders that a campus-wide transformation of
operations was in order.
More Happy Online Customers
28 • OCTOBER 2002
Governing e-Berkeley
The e-Berkeley initiative is a high-level endeavor, sponsored by the executive vice chancellor and provost. Prior to e-Berkeley, UC Berkeley
already had a number of committees that focused on IT issues for the campus, and many groups had been formed to work on e-Berkeley
ideas. In Fall 2000 and Spring 2001, the campus reviewed and clarified the committee structure related to both e-Berkeley and IT projects in
general. As an overall governing body, the e-Berkeley steering committee was formed from campus leadership, reporting to the chancellor.
Chancellor’s Cabinet
(Chancellor)
Academic Senate
(Chair—FS)
e-Berkeley Steering Committee
(Executive VC/Provost)
Academic Senate
Computing & Communications
(Faculty Senate Appt.)
Educational Technology
(VPUE Appt.)
e-Berkeley Implementation
Task Force
(VC-CFO/EVCP Appt.)
Administration and Student Services
(VC/CFO)
e-Commerce Working Group
(VC-BAS Appt.)
Information Technology Architecture
(AVC/CIO)
Communication Working Group
(VC-CFO Appt.)
Information Security
(AVC/CIO Appt.)
Learning Management Systems Working Group
(VPUE Appt.)
• Kronos Timekeeping System is a Web application that
enables employees to clock in to the campus computer network or to fill out a timesheet online.
• Research e-Protocol System is a Web-based application
that will allow researchers to prepare, update, and submit
for approval plans for scientific experiments that must be
reviewed by campus officials to confirm that the experiments comply with campus regulations and law.
Some of these projects are well underway, while others are
in various roll-out phases. However, early indications suggest
wide acceptance for migrating to an electronic environment.
(See sidebar, “More Happy Online Customers.”) To achieve
these and other project goals, UC Berkeley has invested
aggressively in infrastructure activities. During its first year of
inception, e-Berkeley activities focused on defining a new staff
and governance structure, developing a new budget process,
and outlining a proposed new technical architecture for eBerkeley projects.
Policy Working Group
(VC/CFO Appt.)
Other short-term working groups,
as needed
Staffing the Initiative
Although e-Berkeley has a fairly comprehensive system of
governance (See sidebar, “Governing e-Berkeley”), a decision
was made early on to create a permanently funded e-Berkeley
Program Office. One full-time project manager and a part-time
communications intern monitor project success, provide project management assistance, staff various e-Berkeley committees and task forces, and generally keep the entire initiative on
track. The office also promotes collaboration among campus
units by acting as liaison when two departments have varying
opinions about how a project should proceed.
As with many campuses, UC Berkeley has a number of student, faculty, and staff committees involved in reviewing computing policies and specific initiatives. These committees,
which are widely representative of the campus, identified and
recommended for funding the projects they deemed to be crucial to e-Berkeley’s success. To foster collaboration and coordination among these groups and to streamline the
NACUBO BUSINESS OFFICER • 29
decision-making process, the e-Berkeley Program Office instituted a formal budget review process.
Formalizing Funding
One question commonly asked by campus groups assessing
whether an initiative is real or merely window dressing
involves the willingness of a campus and individual units to
provide seed funding and, in some cases, ongoing support.
The question of funding can be further confounded by the
existing campus budget process.
Such was the case for UC Berkeley, where in the past IT initiatives were embedded in a unit’s annual budget request for
ongoing support and had to compete against basic departmental support needs. A further complication: Elements of an
initiative could be embedded in multiple budget submissions
from several different campus units. For example, a budget
submission by a central campus computing unit might include
a technical component for hardware and software support,
while the vice chancellor for research might request a specific
application such as an electronic research protocol system.
The issue concerning the e-Berkeley initiative was how to
integrate budget requests from multiple campus units and not
let funding for key components of individual initiatives fall
through the cracks.
Central to budget modifications instituted by the eBerkeley Program Office was a sea change in how IT initiatives are considered. Instead of having e-Berkeley initiatives
embedded in unit budget requests, these requests are now
extracted from unit submissions and considered as part of a
comprehensive e-Berkeley review process. To facilitate this
review process, each budget submission is required to
include within the proposal a clear definition of program or
functional goals, what the project will achieve, the audience
served by the project, how the project fits into the campus
infrastructure, project costs and timeline, training and support needs and their impact on multiple departments, and
project benefits—either in terms of cost benefits or improved
service or efficiencies.
All budget requests are then submitted to the e-Berkeley
Program Office and built into a comprehensive matrix that
ranks proposals using these criteria: benefits, fit with campus
Web-enabled architecture, timeline, fit with e-Berkeley mission and goals, and commitment of sponsoring entity and
partners. The requests are then reviewed by the e-Berkeley
Steering Committee with input from other committees, prioritized, and submitted to the chancellor for funding consideration.
30 • OCTOBER 2002
Departmental Collaboration
The initiative has spawned close collaboration with individual
departments on a variety of new projects, which although not
funded through the e-Berkeley process, are built on the architecture
defined by e-Berkeley.
New Student Services: Web services for new students include
Online Admissions Decisions and Online Statement of Intent to
Register.
EZSurePay: Campus employees can obtain copies of their earnings statements via a highly secure Web application.
e-Parking: Faculty and staff can renew parking permits and students may purchase parking permits online with a credit card.
CalMail: A Web-based campus-wide e-mail communication system provides e-mail notifications to faculty and staff for official
campus communications.
Document Imaging: A client/server-based application scans
documents and routes them to individuals around the campus
community.
Black Lightning Lecture Notes: Students can purchase lecture
notes via this Web site. More than 3,000 students purchased notes
in Spring 2002.
Books in a Box: Students may order all books for a class in which
they are enrolled.
AirBears: Faculty, students, and staff can have a wireless connection to the campus network using a computer equipped with a
wireless Ethernet card. The service is based on IEEE’s 802.11b
wireless standard that supports speeds of up to 11 Mbps.
The result: With this revised budget process, e-Berkeley
and other large-scale IT projects are now reviewed holistically
from a campus perspective. Likewise, the process of reviewing
and prioritizing these projects within the various committees
has had a secondary benefit of providing buy-in for the projects at various levels on campus. As such, individual committee members have become stakeholders in each project, a
growing sense of campus ownership for the initiative as a
When major applications are moved to the lnternet,
questions and concerns about security and privacy naturally arise.
whole is evident, and campus departments work more collaboratively on broad campus-wide projects as well as smaller
departmental projects.
Of the initial 65 e-Berkeley proposals, 9 were selected for
funding. These nine totaled $1.65 million for project development and implementation. Another $550,000 was dedicated
to provide ongoing support. In addition, individual campus
units committed $650,000 of departmental resources in support of e-Berkeley and related activities. Several projects funded through alternate sources have evolved into e-Berkeley
collaborations. (See sidebar, “Departmental Collaboration.”)
Technical Infrastructure
In addition to overhauling the budget process, another major
activity undertaken during the first year was defining a target
technical architecture for new applications on campus and
creating architectural guidelines that can be used by campus
departments developing applications in this new environment. Guiding principles of the e-Berkeley technical architecture include:
• a software architecture that emphasizes communications
and exchange of data among campus enterprise applications;
• a three-tier (or n-tier) framework that distributes different
parts of an application into different layers: data, business
logic, and the user interface;
• use of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition framework technology,
which fits the existing architecture and culture of the
campus;
• authentication and authorization standards that create a
cohesive environment for accessing multiple systems; and
• Extensible Markup Language that provides a standard language for facilitating communication among systems within a heterogeneous environment.
Security Considerations
When major applications are moved to the Internet, questions
and concerns about security and privacy naturally arise. The
technical architecture for e-Berkeley includes CalNet, a
Kerberos-based authentication system. The main function of
CalNet is to allow people and applications to prove their identities to each other in a reliable, secure manner. The infrastructure can be used by e-Berkeley applications for public
directory service, lookups, authorization, and authentication.
Well-defined access and control policies govern customer and
application access to CalNet. Since e-Berkeley applications—
and most projects developed at the departmental level—use
CalNet to authenticate users, the campus is moving closer to
a single sign-on environment.
In addition, the campus System and Network Security
office—partially funded by e-Berkeley—monitors the campus
network and distributes current information to system managers throughout the campus to minimize damage from network attacks. To enhance security of applications and privacy
of individual data, a set of interim policies for the UC Berkeley
campus articulates how university-wide principles will work.
(See sidebar, “See e-Berkeley for Yourself.”)
Lessons Learned
In carrying out projects, the e-Berkeley Program Office has
developed a better understanding of potential difficulties and
has devised techniques to either avoid common problems or
effectively manage them once they arise. The most difficult
problems tend to fall into one of four categories: business and
process engineering issues, project management problems,
poor cross-department communication and collaboration, and
inadequate technical standards and infrastructure.
1. Establish good business practices. Problems with
business processes often arise with e-Berkeley projects
See e-Berkeley
For Yourself
To find out more about this major UC
Berkeley initiative and the scope of individual projects, here are several key links.
For starters, the e-Berkeley initiative is summarized at
http://eberkeley.berkeley.edu.
The campus security protocols (CalNet) referenced within the
main article are further explained at https://calnet.berkeley.edu.
For more on defining a target technical architecture for new
applications and creating architectural guidelines that can be used
by campus departments, go to http://socrates.berkeley.edu:
4259/ITAC. Under “e-Berkeley Initiatives,” click on “E-Architecture
Documents and Resources.”
The interim e-Berkeley Policies and Guidelines that document
how university-wide principles will work at UC Berkeley may be
found at http://itpolicy.berkeley.edu. Under “Campus IT Policies”
click on “Interim e-Berkeley Policy.”
To view UC Berkeley course lectures from the present and past
semesters, go to http://webcast.berkeley.edu.
NACUBO BUSINESS OFFICER • 31
Strong project management, executive sponsorship for projects,
and a central campus office provide a solid foundation for success.
designed to transform existing paper-based business practices to make information more accessible to the appropriate
members of the community. Project teams conducting these
projects must include staff with a broad range of business
and technical skills. Often the skill set required for such a
project is beyond the capacity of the particular unit or
department sponsoring the project. Therefore, project managers must draw upon campus employees who specialize in
business processes for the Web. Over time, these specialists
become familiar with a broad variety of campus IT systems
and business practices and are able to work with employees
of the sponsoring departments to devise business processes
that are more effective for application users and project
stakeholders than the department’s employees could design
by themselves.
2. Employ strong project management. Employing effective project management techniques is essential for successfully completing projects. The e-Berkeley Program Office uses
an approach recommended by the Project Management
Institute (www.pmi.org) to train e-Berkeley project managers.
During the training, managers learn to create project scope
statements and risk analysis plans.
All e-Berkeley projects now begin with project teams creating short project scope statements that describe intended project outcomes, the metrics that will be used to measure project
success, and any constraints that may impede completion.
Scope statements are kept short—typically no more than onethird of a page—so that all members of a project team can easily digest the information and use it as a touchstone for
making decisions about which features to include in a project.
Each project team also develops a list of likely risks that may
jeopardize completion. For each risk, the team designs an
action plan to mitigate the risk.
3. Create clear cross-departmental communication.
Most e-Berkeley projects involve the collaboration of team
members from different operational units and departments.
Since these employees may not be accustomed to working
together, communication sometimes becomes a problem.
Project managers now use two techniques to alleviate difficulties: a written project communication plan, and registration of
the project on a central campus IT system.
In conjunction with all members of a project team, each
project manager creates a written communication plan that
describes how team members will communicate among themselves as well as with applications users, project stakeholders,
and any other members of the campus community impacted
by the launch of the new Web-based application. The com-
32 • OCTOBER 2002
munication plan includes information about where the latest
project documents (i.e., the scope statement, risk analysis
plan, budget, timeline, functional requirements, and technical
specifications) will be centrally stored so that all team members have access to them. The communication plan also
describes how team members will correspond with one another and disseminate information about changes to the project
plan. Much of the project communication must be carefully
recorded in well-organized written documentation so that
team members joining the project during the middle of implementation can quickly get up to speed.
The project manager also registers the project on a campus
Web-based IT project registration system established by the eBerkeley Program Office. The Web form records the project
manager’s contact information, a brief description of the project, and the associated funding for the project. The manager
also lists other campus IT systems the project application will
use. Once the manager submits the form, the application uses
the information captured to automatically e-mail the appropriate contacts at various units across campus who will need
to collaborate on the project. These distributed e-mails
encourage notified employees to contact the project manager
as soon as possible to discuss the scope of the project and collaboration among participating units.
In addition, the e-Berkeley Program Office encourages
managers to search the IT project registration system when
planning to create a Web application to determine if a similar
project has already been created on campus. If so, the manager can contact the person responsible to discuss how he or she
might be able to leverage the existing application.
4. Build solid technical standards. Finally, the e-Berkeley
Program Office is working closely with campus technical
employees to create technical standards for developing Web
applications. Because campus Web applications are growing
more sophisticated and complex and interact with a growing
list of other IT applications across campus, technical staff are
finding it increasingly important to limit the range of tools
used to develop Web software. In general, the variety of development tools should be limited to a predictable set so that
campus software developers can build applications that can
easily and reliably interact with existing IT applications. To
that end, a series of key infrastructure Web applications for ecommerce, authorization, and authentication that can be used
by all Web developers are being developed. By leveraging
these pieces of Web application infrastructure, campus software developers can build applications more quickly and less
expensively.
Future Focus
As noted, e-Berkeley is an ongoing initiative, with specific
plans for the 2002-2003 year. In addition to ongoing support
for the projects described at the beginning of this article,
funding for a number of innovative projects will test new
technologies and help gauge campus readiness for these ventures. Among them:
• Assess the educational and institutional value of Webenabled PowerPoint with audio narration technology for
classroom lectures, online learning environments for UC
Berkeley Extension, staff training, internal communication, and campus outreach for alumni and prospective
students.
• Replace a cumbersome paper-based process used to
record financial aid awards by units outside Financial Aid
and the Graduate Division.
• Explore how to develop online educational content that is
more accessible, modular, flexible, and reusable than current HTML-based materials.
• Develop a secure interactive application that allows campus units to submit their budget information via the Web,
either by directly entering information into a Web form or
uploading from a spreadsheet.
• Provide students with 24/7 access to information about
using university health services and student health insurance.
• Develop an online grant application process for the
Berkeley division of the academic senate with an interactive Web interface, security system, and routing function
linked to existing campus computer systems.
In the coming year e-Berkeley will focus on strategic
issues related to how it can fundamentally transform the university—from its teaching mission to day-to-day operations.
To achieve this, e-Berkeley will partner with the academic
BRIDGE initiative, an ambitious plan to improve UC
Berkeley undergraduate education, and will undertake a
high-level symposium in the spring to discuss how to effect
this transformation across campus.
critical importance to top leadership and management.
• Vision. A clearly articulated vision is needed regarding
what the initiative is to accomplish, as are specific measures to determine whether institutional or departmental
goals have been met.
• Communication. An effective communication strategy
works both ways—first seeking input from the constituencies to be served and then providing feedback to these same
groups on accomplishments and future directions.
Feedback from consumers as to what does and does not
work well is critical for ensuring continuous improvement.
• Infrastructure. A common technical infrastructure must
support the project. For example, all e-Berkeley applications are required to adopt CalNet, a common security
format.
• Support. Strong project management, executive sponsorship for projects, and a central campus office (in our case,
the e-Berkeley Program Office) to facilitate collaboration
among project participants provide a solid foundation for
project success.
• Participation. Service initiatives
must start with service providers,
not with the chief information officer. Participation of the CIO is critical to the project and the overall
initiative, but operational decisions
are best driven by customers and
service providers.
James A. Hyatt
Finally, success includes understanding why certain efforts sometimes meet with failure. Not all
projects will be winners, but a key
component of all great endeavors is a
willingness to take a chance on a bold
new initiative.
Author Bios James A. Hyatt is vice chancellor, budget and finance, and chief
Helen Kelly
financial officer at the University of
e-Berkeley Applied
California, Berkeley. Helen Kelly is UC
Certain strategic factors are critical for implementing an initiative such as e-Berkeley—whether campus-wide, at a
departmental level, or within a standalone business or student services operation.
• Leadership. Whether support comes from the campus
chancellor, an individual vice chancellor, or college dean,
constituents served must perceive that the initiative is of
Berkeley’s executive director of computer operations and information systems. Jon Conhaim is e-Berkeley
director.
E-mail jahyatt@uclink4.berkeley.edu;
hkelly@uclink.berkeley.edu; conhaim@uclink.berkeley.edu
Jon Conhaim
NACUBO BUSINESS OFFICER • 33