Report 2016-125.2 Recommendation 4 Responses

Report 2016-125.2: The University of California Office of the President: Increasing Costs and Scheduling Delays Have Hampered the UCPath Project and Originally Anticipated Savings Are Unlikely to Materialize (Release Date: August 2017)

Recommendation #4 To: University of California

To ensure that it fully reports the cost of the IT projects, the Office of the President should develop the cost reporting guidelines by December 2017 for UCPath and other significant IT projects across all university locations. These cost guidelines should identify cost categories at both the Office of the President and university locations to ensure that the estimates capture and communicate all development and implementation costs. In addition, the Office of the President should produce cost reports to share with stakeholders at least quarterly.

6-Month Agency Response

The University has obtained approval from the Board of Regents for a new policy related to significant IT project reporting. The first quarterly reporting was made to the Regents at the March 2018 meeting.

As part of the reporting, The Office of the President, working closely with its partners at the UC locations, has initiated the development of guidelines for IT project development - a.k.a., IT Project Handbook - all IT projects undertaken by any university location with a cost estimate of at least $5 million.

An outline has been agreed to by all parties. The chapters of the IT Project Handbook are bring written and leveraging industry best practices, guidelines published by the State of California, and leading practices from our UC locations.

Under the Chapter 3 entitled PROJECT DEVELOPMENT GUIDELINES, and specifically in Section 3.5, there are guidelines established, examples provided, and templates provided for how locations should estimate their project budgets communicate all development and implementation costs into the project reporting framework. The material is complete and posted to http://www.ucop.edu/information-technology-services/initiatives/itlc/it-project-reporting-and-guidelines.html

We have worked with the current projects with budgets greater than $25m and confirm that they are on a cadence to review project cost reports with their executive stakeholder committees quarterly. In addition and in coordination with the IT Project Handbook, we have communicated the requirement for all large projects above $5m to start reviewing project cost summaries quarterly and will be assessing compliance with that requirement over the next year. We also will have all project managers from the different university locations at a Symposium in May 2018 to share best practice for project development and reporting.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Fully Implemented

60-Day Agency Response

The University will develop cost reporting guidelines using internal best practices and review of the State's IT manual. Once finalized we will publish as part of a new IT project "handbook" to be distributed to locations, centrally posted on our UC-IT portal & referenced in UC-IT staff and manager meetings.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: No Action Taken

The Office of the President has not yet developed the recommended cost reporting guidelines or cost reports.

All Recommendations in 2016-125.2

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.