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Good afternoon and welcome to Budget Matters. I’m David Werner, the interim president
of IUP. We’ve had a little switch in format today. In the past in these Budget Matters
videos, I’ve been interviewed, but I get to turn the tables today and I’m going to
be interviewing Bill Balint, IUP’s chief information officer. Bill, welcome to the
show. Thanks a lot for having me and giving me the
opportunity to participate. I appreciate it. The source of our questions is from our viewers.
Let me start with the first question, it comes from something that happened at the University
of Chicago where the faculty members cited that over half of the departments there voluntarily
gave up their phones and it saves hundreds of dollars in each department. So what do
you think about doing something like that at IUP?
Well, historically, decisions about landline telephones have been made by the individual
budget holders, the departments, offices, even individuals in some cases. So we haven’t
really had, like, a universitywide mandate or requirement that an area can only have
a certain number of phones or is required to have a certain number as a minimum. So
when budget holders, you know, they get their budgets, and obviously we’re in difficult
times right now, and they have to prioritize what they’re going to spend that money on.
Whether they’re going to buy new furniture, keep a computer for another year, maybe cut
back on professional development or what have you. And our strategy that we’ve had historically,
landlines have been another one of those that would fall into that category. So obviously
they’re not exempt in any way, they need to be prioritized, and decisions can be made
accordingly at those individual levels. Now, with that said, we’ve got some really good
news, because of some contractual changes at the State System office and the commonwealth
in general, we look for our landline cost to reduce fairly significantly in the next
academic year. Perhaps as much as 30 percent per line per month in the basic phone charges,
and maybe a similar reduction, maybe not quite as large, but a similar reduction for voicemail.
So either side of this, I think we’re going to have some good news. Number one, there
is no requirement that a department or individual budget holder has to have a certain number
of phone lines. So, if they decide that they can meet their needs with fewer phone lines,
they certainly should explore that, but, even if they keep them, we expect them to be able
to have to pay fewer dollars than what they have used to work with. So it’s good news.
That’s great news. In particular, I know there’s all this pressure on operating budgets.
The second question is somewhat related, but it’s about to cell phones and it says instead
of paying for 200 cell phone contracts with Verizon, use the already existing wifi network
on campus to connect iPad… iPod Touches or any other wifi-equipped mobile device,
and this could save over a hundred thousand dollars per year. What do you think about
that? Well, again, I want to preface everything
in saying that these are obviously very challenging budget times, and so we should be looking
at any way we can meet our obligations in the most cost effective way possible. This
is a… This is a very solid suggestion. The one issue with it is that a lot of the most
important contacts we have with individuals who have smartphones occur at times when they
are not physically on the campus. It’s either an off-hour situation, or they’re… an
off-campus situation with an individual. So, in those cases, connecting to the wifi would
not be a practical solution. For example, if I used information technology, a lot of
our systems are used at the most heaviest in the evenings, or weekends, or late night,
and our IT support staff, they’re expected to be at beck and call typically during these
times, but they’re not physically on the campus. So there could be opportunity there
for individuals who do most of their important contacts when they are physically on the IUP
campus, but I think in most cases, most of the most valuable calls and issues that they
have to resolve occur when they are not physically here, so the WiFi wouldn’t really help.
I see. A related question to that, I’ve had people ask why do we have so many employees
with cell phones. Instead of providing the total cost, why not just give the employee
a stipend and they would actually hold the contract for the phone themselves, rather
than the phone being owned by and paid for by the university. What do you think about
that as an alternative? Well, that is certainly done in a lot of places,
and it is certainly something that IUP has taken a very long look at. Susie Sink, our
associate vice president for fiscal affairs, put together a cross functional group that
looked at a variety of different options, I think there were five different options
that were explored by representatives from different areas of the university and try
to figure out which one would give IUP its best and the most cost effective outcome and
most effective outcome. When you look point by point, when you really get into the details
of it, it appeared to us, certainly, that within the scenarios we are looking at, that
actually the paradox was that having the university own the phone and own the data plan and the
subscription gave the university its best outcome. There are a variety of reasons for
this. One of them is that… like, for example, if we used IT, which a lot of the plans are
for technologists, we can use business share plans to take care of a variety of different
employees much lower than what it would be for the individual to have a retail plan or
each individual employee went out and purchased their own plan because they couldn’t use,
for example, business share plans. So, while it is true that the university could choose
not to pay for 100 percent of that, they could maybe reimburse the employee for a partial
amount which obviously would save money. If we just look at how much the plan itself costs,
it would definitely be lower when you’re able to bundle them together. So, if you’re
going to say that an employee is responsible, more or less in a lot of cases close to 24
by 7, they’re expected to answer that call as an employee, should… you know, what,
what burden should be on the employee to have that phone? And that’s a value judgment
that the university would have to make, but, if we assume that if we’re going to ask
that of an employee and therefore we’re going to fund the cost, like a lot of our
sister institutions do that do have stipend models, the amount that we would pay, it is
less if we can actually buy them in bulk. There are other issues. IUP does not pay termination
fees. We also… We control the number. So, in some cases depending on how an employee
leaves the university, the university may not want that number still ringing to that
same human being. In this case, the university has a choice of taking a… taking a number
and closing it. In addition to that, a lot of times the phones are less expensive for
the university because we purchase them in bulk. From an IT support perspective, there’s
really no comparison. When a university owns the phone, we can dictate what models we’ll
support, and with having a small staff, we didn’t… we don’t have any more staff
that what we used to before smartphones came into being. So we kind of take the support
out of hide if you would. By limiting to three or four different models at any given time,
we can pretty inexpensively gain expertise. When people own their own phone or own device,
how much variety would there be within those? Could we require upgrades in a timely manner
when our softwares change? It’s pretty difficult to do that when you don’t own it. When you
own it, it does help to lower our support costs, even though a lot of people don’t
think about that. So, if we move to a stipend system, it might
actually drive up the costs of administering the process in your operation?
It would clearly drive up the cost in that way, but even the monthly individual costs,
when we look at some comparison universities that we looked at, they were actually reimbursing
employees more money, substantially more money in the specific case that I looked at with
the sister institution, than what we pay to own the data plan ourselves. And one other
thing, it is an individual cost center holder’s decision, just like it is for landline phones,
computers, furniture, professional development, office supplies. The difference is, with a
smartphone, a vice president has to approve the acquiring of that smartphone and they
also do periodic reviews of all the smartphones and smartphone plans that they do have in
their division. So, there actually is executive-level oversight when it comes to a smartphone. This
is… It is expensive, and it is not a trivial expense and it needs to be looked at, but
I think that, like I said, this cross-functional group, certainly not… not just IT -- only
one IT person out of the whole group -- looked at the entire matter and felt that this was
a right move for IUP, at least for the current time.
Well, thank you Bill for joining us. And if you have a question for Budget Matters, you
can send it to the address on your screen and you can see upcoming editions of Budget
Matters in IUP Daily.