University of Florida CISE Department
Computer Maintenance and Supplies Cost Center

Table of Contents

• Purpose
• Expected Levels of Service
• Management
• Funds Collection
• Charging Contracts and Grants
• Budgeting
• Cost Center Management
• Maintenance Hierarchy

Purpose

The purpose of the UF CISE Department Computer Maintenance and Supplies Cost Center (CMSCC) is to provide service and supplies to the UF CISE Department to allow its computing equipment to operate to serve the needs of the CISE Department. The department uses this equipment to teach undergraduate and graduate students, support the research program of its faculty and students, and to support administration of both educational and research programs.

Expected Levels of Service

• Each faculty member shall be provided with one desktop workstation.

  Hardware or software failure of a faculty workstation can be expected to be addressed by either repair or replacement within a reasonable time period. A temporary replacement machine of lower quality may be employed while repair is carried out.

  If a faculty member's dedicated use workstation provides capabilities beyond the standard configuration, repairs below the minimal configuration replacement cost will be carried out at cost center expense. Repairs above this cost will be handled via cost sharing with the faculty member.

• Licenses for commonly used software will be provided by the Cost Center (subject to Facilities Committee approval). Such software will be installed in a timely fashion by Cost Center personnel.
• Each departmental file server (as identified by the Facilities Committee) will be maintained by a service contract with an appropriate servicing company. Service contracts will be kept in force at all times. Levels of service to be provided will be determined by the Facilities Committee.
• Computer equipment falling into Tier 2 of the hardware support hierarchy will generally be repaired on site or with depot repair services. Repairs of this kind may take up to 3 months. Critical use items may be temporarily replaced by other equipment while repair is taking place. In the case of items nearing the end stages of useful lifetime or of items requiring extensive repair, these items may be salvaged. Requests for replacement in such cases will be considered by the Facilities Committee.
• Special software and hardware items will be installed by cost center personnel. Inspection and diagnosis of special software or hardware problems will be carried out by Cost Center personnel. Simple repairs as described below will be carried out by Cost Center personnel on special hardware items as necessary.

Funds Collection

We budget the CMSCC as if it is a separate entity providing all of the computing supplies and service that take place in the CISE department. Thus we include the following categories of costs in its budget:

• Salaries of computing support personnel, including full- and part-time employees supporting computing.
• All maintenance contracts.
• Computing supplies and replacement parts for items covered under CMSCC maintenance.

Funding for the CMSCC is based on a unit charge per FTE-year (one full time employee working one month) for whom computing is supported. The following categories of FTE are including in the funding formula:

• Faculty.
• Staff (excluding cost center staff) including full- and part-time employees.
• Teaching and research assistants.
• FTE equivalent associated with classroom teaching support.

The number of FTE-years associated with classroom teaching support is determined according to the formula presented below. This formula is predicated on the theory that the FTE of service associated with each workstation is a fixed unit, therefore we can determine the FTE-years associated with classroom support workstations by proportional comparison with the FTE-years associated with workstations used for job functions other than classroom support.

NonClassWS = number of workstations used for purposed other than
    classroom support
ClassWS = number of workstations used exclusively for classroom support
NonClassFTE = number of FTE-years associated with faculty, non-CMSCC staff,
    teaching assistants, and research assistants
ClassFTE = number of FTE-years associated with classroom support, computed
    as follows:

ClassFTE = NonClassFTE * ClassWS / NonClassWS

Example 1 (Computing Class FTE-years):

ClassWS = 56
NonClassWS = 146
NonClassFTE = 74

ClassFTE  =  74 * 56 / 146  =  28

The CMSCC charge per unit FTE-year shall computed yearly by dividing applicable cost center expenses in the previous year by the number of FTE-years supported by the CMSCC in the previous year.

Example 2 (Computing per-FTE-year charge):

CMSCC expenditures for FY 1995:  $214,787
CMSCC FTE-years for FY 1995:          102

CMSCC Charge per FTE-year for FY 1995 = 214,787 / 102 = $2,105.75
CMSCC Charge per manmonth for FY 1995 = 2,105.75 / 12 mo = $175.48

Charging Contracts and Grants

Example 3 (Computing CMSCC Charge for a Grant):

Using figures from Example 2 suppose one employee is employed at 25% for the entire year of FY 1995 on a grant. Then the associated CMSCC charge is computed as follows:

CMSCC-charge = CMSCC per-FTE-year charge * number of FTE-years
             = $2,105.75 * 0.25
             = $526.44

Thus $526.44 would be transferred from the grant to pay for the provided CMSCC support.

Budgeting

Cost Center Management

• The CISE Department System Administrator.
• The CISE Department Associate Chair.
• The CISE Department Computer Technician.
• Two faculty members appointed by the CISE Department Chair.

The mission of this board will be to administer resources of the Cost Center to support computing for research, instruction, and departmental administration. This body will determine procedures and policies for all Cost Center functions subject to approval of the CISE Department Chair.

Maintenance Hierarchy

Tier 1

Items covered by maintenance contracts.

• Department mission critical support servers (including IP routing, name, mail, ftp, and news services, etc.)

Tier 2

Items maintained internally or by external piece repair. Any depot repair costs are generally "pre-approved".

• Network cable plant
• Commodity desktop workstations
• Printers

Tier 3

Items maintained by Center personnel, but with only limited funding for repairs (about $200). Repairs costing above this amount will require approval by the Facility Committee or funding by the affected parties.

• Non-commodity desktop workstations
• Obsolete Computers or peripheral devices

Tier 4

Items maintained by Center personnel, but any repair costs beyond minor amounts (about $50) will not be funded by the Cost Center. Petitions can be made to the Facility Committee on a case by case basis, but the users of equipment in this category should expect that these petitions are unlikely to succeed and that they must supply funds for any significant repairs.

• Special (especially high-cost) peripheral devices.
• All other equipment not specifically included in any other tier