Trustees scheduled to vote on IT outsourcing proposal on Tuesday

Lilly Kujawski | Editor
Nicholas Ketchum | Deputy Editor

On Tuesday, the Washtenaw Community College Board of Trustees is expected to vote on the proposal that will determine the future of WCC’s Information Technology Services. The question facing trustees: retain the department in its current model, rebuild the staffing structure, including possible retraining, or outsource management and services to the Virginia-based company Ellucian?

If the college replaces the current ITS department with Ellucian services, the jobs of 31 full-time employees and a handful of part-time employees would be affected.

Ellucian currently provides the college with its enterprise resource planning system, Banner, which makes Ellucian the number one choice for a third-party management service, Bill Johnson, chief financial officer at WCC, said on Friday.

In 2017, an intermittent three-day network outage across campus occurred.

WCC ITS staff, along with outside vendors, repaired the network after discovering an incompatible device. They improved the network’s design to prevent similar outages—moving from a “flat” network design to one that’s better at containing certain vulnerabilities, according to David Lacerte, a system administrator in the ITS department.

Johnson cited the outage as a “catalyst” to a full assessment of the college ITS department. After the outage occurred, CampusWorks, another third-party vendor, was contracted to conduct an audit of the department.

In addition to Johnson’s role as CFO, the ITS department also reports to him. After prior chief information officer Amin Ladha departed in 2015 there have been various interim CIOs contracted by CampusWorks.

“We never posted the job after the prior CIO left,” said Johnson during an interview with The Voice. “The president had asked me to work with the team and to start to make the right kind of investments that could start to address the needs.”

“We brought in CampusWorks and other consultants to supplement the team,” Johnson added.

The outsourcing recommendation isn’t financially motivated, according to Johnson. The proposal was drafted as the result of a two-year assessment of the current ITS infrastructure, the needs of the college and the report from CampusWorks, Johnson said.

Even though the proposal wasn’t intended as a cost savings measure, Johnson said there would be a “small net savings” of about $600,000 annually.

The Voice requested a copy of the CampusWorks report from Johnson and Brendan Prebo, assistant vice president of marketing and communications at WCC, but a copy was not available at this time.

Some community members have pushed back after learning of the outsourcing proposal. Last week, a sit-in strike organized by members of the newly founded WCC chapter of the Young Democrat Socialists of America party was held at the Student Center in protest.

A petition against the proposal was also posted on Change.org by Marie Wood, 24, a computer systems major at WCC. Wood has a family member who works in the ITS department at WCC.

The petition has garnered support with more than 350 signatures out of its goal of 500 since it was first posted on June 15.

Wood, who works in the IT field herself, also wrote a series of letters voicing her concern about the proposal and shared them on Reddit, as well as with Board of Trustee members.

Wood originally posted that Bellanca censored the content published by The Voice. During the interview with Wood, The Voice clarified that this is not the case and that the paper works independently from the college. Wood posted a correction to her Reddit thread after the interview.

Wood said she’s not opposed to outsourcing in general and believes that sometimes it really is the best decision in some situations—but the ITS department is not one of those situations, in her opinion.

“I just urge the community to take a stance on it, whether it’s for or against it,” Wood said. “I want everyone to understand where their tax money is going and how that’s going to affect them.”

Wood added that above else, she hopes that the voices of concern about the proposal were really heard and considered by Bellanca, the board members and other college officials.

For Robert Barber, 32, a public policy major and one of the lead organizers of the WCC YDSA sit-in strike, the outsourcing proposal was an issue of principle and a wider trend in public education in the United States.

“I was in the process of organizing the Young Democratic Socialists chapter at the school and we’re very strongly opposed to any kind of privatization or commodification of public jobs,” Barber said. “So it seemed like an excellent opportunity to get involved.”

“I kind of took it for granted that a community college that’s funded by taxpayer dollars would cater to the community, including securing community jobs,” he added. “However, I was mistaken.”

Many ITS staff members expressed loyalty to the college and what it stands for—which is the reason many of them chose to work at WCC in the first place.

“I believed in what this college was selling,” said Nicholas Maxwell, an academic systems specialist in the ITS department, who started at WCC as a student.

Maxwell believes that WCC “filled a gap in the community that was sorely needed,” and even moved across the street from the school because he likes it so much.

Maxwell said that he and some of the other ITS staff members have options they can turn to, and at this point, they’re more concerned about how students and faculty will fare if the proposal goes through.

“We’ve stopped worrying about us; we’re worried about the college,” Maxwell said.

According to the plan presented to the board, all 31 full-time employees would be offered a job at Ellucian. It is unclear whether salary or specific job positions would be impacted by this change or if employment by Ellucian would require relocation for current WCC IT staff members.

A severance package based on length of tenure would be available to full-time employees who opt out of employment at Ellucian, as detailed in the proposal.

According to the proposal, full-time employees of 10 years or more would receive: one year’s salary and a year of health coverage for themselves and dependents. Employees of 5-10 years would receive: six months’ salary and health coverage for themselves and dependents. Employees of less than 5 years would receive: three months’ salary and health coverage for themselves and dependents.

While there wasn’t any specific transition plan included for part-time employees in the proposal, Johnson said it’s anticipated that not all 31 full-time employees will accept a job at Ellucian, in which case Ellucian would be interested in interviewing part-time staff for those remaining spots.

All impacted employees and their dependents would be also be entitled to taking free courses at WCC for a five-year period, and employees would also have access to support from the Career Transitions office at the college, according to the proposal.

The board meets Tuesday, June 25 at 6 p.m. in Towsley Auditorium in the Morris Lawrence building.

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