Personnel from Information Technology Services and the Center for Academic Technology Support updated the Council on University Planning and Budgeting on how they are planning on moving forward in coming years.

Josh Awalt, interim assistant vice president for ITS, said there was a decrease in the 2016/2017 budget.

Moving forward, Awalt said ITS wants to review and redefine funding models.

In the past, there were five to six different fees ITS charged to various areas across campus, though it stopped charging these during the budget impasse.

ITS is now working on a plan to come up with a better funding model by taking all of those fees and combining them into a standardized fee to present to the president’s council.

This year, he said he worked closely with an administrative assistant in the department when going through the contract to see if they were actively using software that they are paying for and if this software was license appropriate.

“We found that we were paying for 15-20 licenses when really only needed about 10,” Awalt said.

To fix this, ITS worked with vendors to get that level down and to a reasonable amount that will allow them to continue to grow as enrollment and staffing increases give them the ability to.

In CATS, some student technology money has been freed up, which the department plans to use on auditoriums in the Physical Sciences building, Coleman and Buzzard Halls, John Henderson, assistant vice president for academic affairs for technology, said.

He said in the spring, depending on how enrollment is, they will put in proposals around campus to upgrade classrooms.

CATS was also allowed to bring back another web developer with the help of the president and vice president’s office.

“We’re happy we’re moving forward,” Henderson said.

Though combining CATS and ITS to save money has been talked about in program analysis reviews, Paul McCann, interim vice president for business affairs, said with the current situation the university is in, there is a not a lot of money to save in that area.

He said though the university might potentially be able to do something about getting a Chief Information Officer, it is an expensive position to hire.

“We are not looking at this. We are attempting to move forward on it, but it is not something we’ve had a lot of chances to work with at this point,” McCann said.

Cassie Buchman can be reached at 581-2812 or cjbuchman@eiu.edu.