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 Background and Rationale: UW Oshkosh needs a new integrated Student Information System (SIS) to meet increasing demands for more information, more flexibility, and more support. Those demands will continue to escalate to accommodate the changing learning environment of the 21st century. Our existing legacy SIS was designed to serve the more rigid learning setting of the 1960s and 1970s. The 25-year-old SIS we use today is ill-suited to support the expanding, ever-increasing flexibilities of the emerging learning environment. It has been a reliable system, but it has major problems:
The time is right for UW Oshkosh to move to the new technologies embodied by PeopleSoft’s SIS, such as the client/server environment, relational databases, and fourth-generation languages. PeopleSoft’s SIS will help us meet the challenges of the future. PeopleSoft’s SIS is a sophisticated and future-directed system that will deliver significant new planning and analytical power to the campus. PeopleSoft allows the University’s business rules (academic policies) to drive the SIS--technology accommodates policy. The SIS will address the campus’s increasing demand for easy access to student data. As a bonus, PeopleSoft’s SIS contains a Financial Aid module that will eliminate the need to devote programming hours each year to update our current legacy Financial Aid programs. Why PeopleSoft? The campuses in the OWL Consortium--Oshkosh, Whitewater, La Crosse, and Platteville--have reviewed Student Information Systems from two vendors on current state contract--PeopleSoft and Software AG. Our users have concluded that PeopleSoft’s SIS more than meets their functional needs. They have concluded that Software AG’s SIS does not meet their functional needs. UW Madison licensed PeopleSoft’s SIS last summer, and is committing $10 million to acquisition and installation. The UW Madison contract provides for a discount for other UW institutions which license PeopleSoft’s SIS. UW Whitewater and UW Platteville have also decided to license PeopleSoft’s SIS. This creates a solid UW PeopleSoft Users Group that will serve us well as we install PeopleSoft and migrate to it. UW La Crosse has not ruled out purchasing PeopleSoft’s SIS; their vendor selection will be complete by the end of this month. Timeline: It is important that the University make its SIS selection now. The new SIS must be implemented by August 1998 if we are to avoid the Year 2000 problem. That is less than 18 months away. Staff Commitment: Implementing PeopleSoft will require major staff commitments from the user departments and the IT division. Reallocation of work within the departments and IT will be necessary. In some cases, additional non-continuing funds for temporary staff may be required. In addition, a full-time Project Manager, Team Leaders, and a Project Steering Committee are needed. 3/24/97
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Questions/comments? Email berens@uwosh.edu
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