Editor’s note: Today's overview of the CSU system, one in a series of agency profiles that Techwire is publishing, will be followed Friday by a Q&A with Patrick Perry, chief information officer to the chancellor.
The California State University system, as an agency, has a budget of nearly $5.77 billion to operate its 23 campuses. Of this total, about $100 million is dedicated to IT each year.
Under the CSU umbrella, each campus has its own technology shop. At the level of the chancellor’s office, campuses are delivered some centralized tech services, including the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, PeopleSoft. This includes finance, human resources and the student system and is used by all campuses except San Diego State, which still uses an old legacy system.
It also does central procurement and installation of all networking equipment and security hardware for the campuses.
Each campus is responsible for its own Learning Management System (LMS), but the central CSU IT office helps them to purchase the system. The primary LMS’ used are Blackboard, Canvas and Moodle, with one campus using Desire2Learn.
CSU is currently upgrading its PeopleSoft suite to Version 9.2. This upgrade is expected to take a few years as it must be done in chunks, a few campuses at a time.
Two bids, which are in their final stages of conclusion, are for wireless installation and log management services in all campuses. Both projects are expected to take a few years to complete.
CSU is beginning to consider cloud services as it grows. “We are in the early stage of looking at what kind of cloud service we want to procure or manage on behalf of all the campuses,” Patrick Perry, CSU Chief Information Officer, told Techwire.
Also being worked on is the creation of a data lake that will centralize all the data used in the ERP, facilities, all finance data and academic planning data. This will be hosted on-premise in the beginning, but will potentially be cloud-hosted in the future.
The IT department is in the early stages of deciding what kind of integration layer it will build for PeopleSoft.
“We’re going to start looking at potentially getting some type of integration product that sits on top of PeopleSoft that becomes the standard for all other products that we integrate,” Perry said.
In the transition to the cloud, CSU Monterey Bay and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo are the frontrunners. Cal Poly SLO recently signed a deal with Amazon that will move all of its data from the data center into the cloud, which means it will not have to build a new data center.
The IT department in the Chancellor’s Office aims to assist the campuses in migration and help them to find the best cloud solutions for each campus’ needs.
One challenge CSU expects to face as it carries out its projects is navigating the non-standard systems throughout the campuses. “Even within our PeopleSoft system, it’s really 23 individual iterations of PeopleSoft,” Perry explained.
Another challenge is technology equity between campuses and how to provide the necessary upgrades and installations at the campuses that don’t have a lot of resources or funding.
A goal of CSU in terms of IT is to improve the base level of technology and ensure that each campus is on the same playing field, particularly on what the student experience and interaction with it is.
It also wants to reduce friction within the system to allow the students to self-serve for their educational plans and experiences.
The ultimate goal of CSU is to increase the graduation rates. To help achieve this, the IT department is working on the ERP integration layer and “trying to save money and standardize things where we can and leverage the size of the system for procurement,” Perry said.
Chancellor – Timothy P. White
Contact info: twhite@calstate.edu
562-951-4000
Chief Information Officer – Patrick Perry
Contact info: pperry@calstate.edu
