In order to align resources more closely with the campus mission and priorities, part of the new campus budget strategy includes looking at resources by activity. By looking at spending for a given activity across departments and across fund sources, a more complete picture of the cost of an activity emerges, and ultimately allows more strategic decision-making about investment in that activity. In support of moving to this budgeting model, Financial Planning and Technology Investment Services (FPTIS), in the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), built on the work of a previous collaboration with the Campus Budget Office to profile the information technology (IT) spending on the Berkeley campus.
For the first time, aggregate data about IT spending trends, covering FY 2001–02 through FY 2006–07, is available. The study revealed that the campus has been spending in the range of $127M to $136M per year on IT. Although total expenditures (without taking inflation into account) have not declined, the percent of the UC Berkeley budget spent on IT has declined from about 9.7 percent in FY 2001–02 to about 8 percent in FY 2006–07. These ratios are on a par with three other Carnegie-class institutions with roughly comparable data. At each institution, the amount spent per campus headcount varied, depending on the size of the campus budget compared to the campus population.
It is interesting to note that over the past several years, the IT-related salaries and benefits have increased from about 58 percent to about 2/3 of the total IT spend. One notable concern is that rising salary and benefits costs could impact the ability to pay for essential salary and non-salary costs for operations as well as IT strategic needs.
See Figure 1 [page opens in new window] for IT spending by expenditure category.
It is worth noting that the accuracy of these findings is reflective of the data that could be extracted from the current accounting system. Expenses are not necessarily coded in a uniform way across campus departments. Moving forward, it is anticipated that the Career Compass job mapping will improve the precision of the IT staffing data, both by clarifying the types of IT work being performed as well as by capturing staff that currently may not have an IT title code (e.g., generic manager title code) yet are performing IT work.
This recent analysis included consulting with the Campus Budget Office, the Office of Planning and Analysis, various departments, and other universities. The information was presented to the Campus Technology Council in May 2008 and to the Chancellor's Cabinet in June 2008. A PDF of the PowerPoint slides, 2008 Technology Spend Analysis, that accompanied the presentation to the Chancellor's Cabinet is accessible from the CIO Reports and Presentations page. For a description of the data and sources please see Appendix II in the slide presentation.
This information is a beginning point to stimulate discussion and to help inform high-level decisions regarding campus IT resources. If you have questions or comments, please direct them to Susan McKeehan,