URBANA – The first three budget-review reports to be finalized for the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois point to strengths and weaknesses in information technology, scholarships and the Graduate College.

The budget review teams were created in February by interim Chancellor Robert Easter and interim Vice Chancellor Richard Wheeler to look at cost savings in the wake of the state budget crisis, and they began turning in their reports this summer.

After a period for public response, Easter and Wheeler addressed the first three, including one on information technology.

In that area, they note, "The lack of a coordinated effort to develop and maintain applications for business purposes results in redundancies and thus, lost efficiencies and savings."

The reports are available online. 

The report follows two others on information technology that echo some of the concerns.

Cutting or combining administrative offices and services like information technology and purchasing could save $50 million to $60 million over the next two or three years, according to a working group named by interim UI President Stanley Ikenberry last November.

The report compiled a list of 43 recommendations, many of which are based on personnel, 70 percent of the UIs spending. Other ideas suggest how to save money with central purchasing, centralizing computer services and dealing with regulatory compliance issues.

In July, President Michael Hogan cited plans to streamline information technology services, which could save $18 million; use strategic, coordinated purchasing, saving an estimated $22 million; centralize services through shared service centers; and develop a universitywide plan for human resources, now scattered among the campuses and academic units.

The Urbana campus' chief spokeswoman, Robin Kaler, said the report identifies key issues historical to the university.

"The way the university has developed, in some ways very decentralized, is a great strength, and a bit of weakness," she said Tuesday.

She said the teams have understood that issue.

"Some of that work is to find areas that are strongest decentralized, and other areas that are strongest centralized," she said

The report asks the Deans Budget Committee to "incorporate a method by which units report on their pressing business processing needs and how solutions that have been produced could be applied to other areas or units."

"We support the creation of an Innovation Investment Fund and will ask the Budget Officers Councils to suggest an amount to be held in the fund and a process by which an individual or group would get access to the fund. (The fund) is intended to reward individuals or units that succeed in designing solutions to these pressing needs.

"Increasingly, agencies are requiring researchers to keep data perpetually," the report said.

University Librarian Paula Kaufman will lead a group to study the issue.