Quote:
Originally Posted by Cassanova
10-20 Million!!! The System doesn't need a god damn overhaul. It needs improvements. Limiting the time? Increasing server bandwith or something... its just a matter of re-writing some of the code. Not having an entire new program.
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Well "coding it better" and "Getting extra bandwidth" as quick easy fixes are sadly myths in the case of SOLAR.
Since they are so obvious I have actually suggested them to more then one person in UTS, however the answer in short has been that we can "possibly" do a bit of that but the actual costs because of the prehistoric coding/IT Infrastructure of Student Records system means it will end up costing alot of money.
The CIO gave me a simple option, a) We can get this minor cosmetic changes in there that will slightly improve the system for a certain six/low seven figure cost or b) We can do a long run overhaul that most Ontario Universities are going through in the past few years(Waterloo recently), the long run overhaul will render incompatible any changes made with option "A" because they will be going with a brand new systems provider. Therefore the Admin will economically favor the latter.
But in my opinion the main issue here is that there is a lack of incentive for the administration to spend that amount of money "just" on SOLAR because having a low ease of registration doesn't stop thousands of students from applying to Mac Every year nor does it make current students pack up shop and leave(Keeping in mind that places like Uoft suffer from similar issues with their ROSI system). Sure there is a firestorm in the summer but it dies down soon enough, as someone who tried to lobby the university to get it changed it was a very hard sell, but atleast they did hire the outside consultants who are almost done their report and we have been promised improvements.
The tricky issue here is that SOLAR isn't a separate entity, it was built as a direct part of student records and was supposed to hold no more then 10,000 or so students at max. With the Double Batch(In 05 or 06 where they eliminated Grade 13) and exponential student enrollment it was by no means designed to hold 22,000 students. Hence what has happened is that they have applied patches and tape over the years to hold it together while the core itself is no longer capable of supporting 22,000 students. In other words we can't directly tweak aspects of SOLAR without affecting student records.
And lastly I haven't been able to procure a breakdown since the costs are very much estimated based on similar upgrades at other Canadian universities, the "actual" figure will only be determined after a RFP later on this summer(Or so I heard) and will most probably not be revealed to any outsiders like the MSU. The figure was not just for SOLAR itself but the entire Student Records department(Which is disturbingly manually fed) and accounting & payroll, libraries, research and so on. In other words the
entire IT Infrastructure.
p.s: Unfortunately with my election to "External" affairs I will no longer be able to pursue these issues because they no longer fall under my mandate, if you have any questions or concerns you can email the University affairs Commissioner
[email protected] ca or the President Mary Koziol
[email protected] r.ca who have taken over my Google Apps project as well.