Dear OCCS Colleagues,
Back on August 27th, President Runte informed the campus that Old Dominion University was required to implement a 5 percent budget cut. In providing guidance to the campus, the President stressed the importance to "buffer all areas central to our mission, our academic core." This guidance is truly understandable when you consider that a significant budget impact to our academic core could have negative consequences to our students and on tuition revenue. In our decision-making process, the goal of the OCCS management team was to protect the services associated with our core instruction and research activities.
The budget cuts for OCCS were significant, however the budget decisions were made with a perspective of the full range of technology services provided to the campus and also with a long-term view of current and future services. The cuts we made will still allow us to make investments to support future technologies, trends, and services to meet the requirements of the campus. At the same time, the cuts will require us to "tighten the belt" and reduce some existing services.
We also implemented cuts that would also provide for future cost savings or cost avoidance. For example, the cut to the printout delivery service announced to the campus was as much cost avoidance as a budget cut. The direct cost savings from the cut are a result of reducing part-time labor, gas, vehicle maintenance, etc. The cost avoidance comes through avoiding the increased print volumes to central printing during budget reductions. We continue to notice a shift of printing to the central printing service from academic units. The central printing volume is increasing and the volume on academic unit copiers is decreasing. From our experience during budget reductions, this shift increases. We cannot afford any increase cost against our printing budget. The yearly central print volume for the six instructional academic colleges is over 3.7M. And, we are frequently printing 1 - 5 page jobs, printing a cover page, putting the printout in a bag and then delivering it. I believe these print jobs will shift back to local printers, which is an appropriate use of resources.
The following details the budget cuts for OCCS.
• Eliminated Dial-up Service for Faculty
• Eliminated guest dial-up services
• Eliminated IT Research Services (Gartner Core Research, Faulkner Information Services)
• Terminated fiber lease between main campus and CCPO facility on 52nd street.
• Eliminated printout delivery service
• Reduced student lab consultants
• Abolished vacant IT Training position
• Abolished vacant Desktop support position
• Reduced Infrastructure budget by $250K
We will continue to look for cost savings that can be applied back into our budget. We are also asking for your help to identify areas that would provide for cost savings. Please send me your ideas and suggestions.
Our focus in OCCS will still be to provide quality, reliable and cutting-edge technology services and support to the campus. Thank you for your dedicated effort and creative solutions that are a big part of making ODU a top university.
Thanks, Rusty
