Educause 2006 - Kuali (open source financial)

Educause 2006
Dallas, Texas

Still Crazy – Kuali Project
Bruce Alexander, Michigan
Michael Allred, UC Davis (actually he couldn’t make it so Kris covered it)
Lee Balarmino, San Joaquin Delta College
Sally Jackson, University of Arizona
David Lassner, Hawaii
John Walsh, Indiana University

This was about Kuali (think koala bear, but with an ‘i’ at the end) http://kuali.org, the open source software for the financial/Admin end of higher ed.

A few management things they did which sounded interesting:
They have a Board, a functional council, and a technical Council – each of which has power and autonomy.
All sustaining member systems have representation and a vote on each council, and they have people working on the project – DEDICATED to the project, and reporting to the Kuali Project Manager.

They use norms and standards as drivers. Delta sees this product as being MORE SECURE than others, and looked at the life of companies selling commercial packages, and compared it to the 150 years Indiana U has been around, and the 100 years the other institutions have been around . . . he’s not worried about them going out of business. Being part of a Mellon grant forced deliverables and timelines.

The UC system was 25 years old and it was time for a conversion. Timing was important.
Davis, Irvine and Santa Barbara are all working on Kuali. They all had worries about standards, they were all using obsolete technology, and the options were expensive. Davis is set to go live July ’08.

This is higher ed focused, no license fee.

One interesting unforeseen advantage – by-product – of participation:
The institutions had a hard time attracting and retaining good people, and this option (open source) allowed the new (generation) staff to be part of a bigger project and a big team. The staff sees this as a professional development opportunity.