Report 2016-125.2 Recommendations

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.

To ensure that it consistently follows best practices related to project management, the Office of the President should develop and implement guidelines for IT project development by June 2018. The guidelines should apply to all IT projects undertaken by any university location with a cost estimate of at least $5 million or more and should include a means to assess schedules for reasonableness, and requirements for the creation and maintenance of an integrated schedule and resource plan for each project.

To ensure that it consistently follows best practices related to project management, the Office of the President should develop and implement guidelines for IT project development by June 2018. The guidelines should apply to all IT projects undertaken by any university location with a cost estimate of at least $5 million or more and should include requirements for rigorous change management processes that establish a means of assessing the implications of changes to a project's scope, cost, and schedule.

To ensure that it consistently follows best practices related to project management, the Office of the President should develop and implement guidelines for IT project development by June 2018. The guidelines should apply to all IT projects undertaken by any university location with a cost estimate of at least $5 million or more and should include procedurally sound requirements for identifying, reviewing, and resolving risks to a project.

To ensure that it consistently follows best practices related to project management, the Office of the President should develop and implement guidelines for IT project development by June 2018. The guidelines should apply to all IT projects undertaken by any university location with a cost estimate of at least $5 million or more and should include IV&V to oversee the technical aspects of project development.

The Office of the President should require that all university locations follow best practices by ensuring that each location creates a deliverable expectations document for each IT contract similar to the documents the State's management framework describes. The Office of the President should establish this requirement by December 2017. The deliverable expectations document should, at a minimum, identify the deliverables for each milestone and define the scope, content, entrance criteria, acceptance criteria, and development schedule for each deliverable.

To ensure that they are able to exercise necessary oversight for the university's significant IT projects, the regents should develop status reporting standards for the Office of the President and all university locations to follow by December 2017. Such reporting standards should apply to all university IT projects with more than a specified cost and, at a minimum, should establish the frequency with which the Office of the President and all university locations must report to the regents. Such updates should occur at least three times per calendar year and coincide with regents' meetings to allow for oral discussion.

To ensure that they are able to exercise necessary oversight for the university's significant IT projects, the regents should develop status reporting standards for the Office of the President and all university locations to follow by December 2017. Such reporting standards should apply to all university IT projects with more than a specified cost and, at a minimum, should establish the types of disclosures the Office of the President and all university locations must present about each IT project including, but not limited to, changes in scope, projected cost, and schedule.

To ensure that they are able to exercise necessary oversight for the university's significant IT projects, the regents should develop status reporting standards for the Office of the President and all university locations to follow by December 2017. Such reporting standards should apply to all university IT projects with more than a specified cost and, at a minimum, should establish the types of significant project risks the Office of the President and all university locations must disclose. The updates should also describe the actions the Office of the President and all university locations are taking to mitigate the risks and the potential effects of those risks on a project's cost, schedule, and scope.