To: President John Petersen From: Louis J. Gross, UTK Faculty Senate President Re: UT System Organizational Structure of Information Technology Date: May 23, 2007 cc: UTK Faculty Senate Executive Committee, Chancellor Crabtree, Interim CIO Muly, Chief Financial Officer Rogers, Executive Vice President Millhorn, Assistant to the President Stuart As you are no doubt aware, the Knoxville area units of UT experienced a day-long failure of email on May 1, as the UTK Final Exam period was starting. At any time such a failure would present significant difficulties for our faculty, staff and students, but this one was particularly of concern given its timing. The UTK Faculty Senate has regularly expressed to you our concerns about the management of Information Technology on our campus. In your meeting with the University Faculty Council of January 8, 2007, you had promised that responsibility for our campus email system would be transfered to campus authority, along with all the necessary resources from the Office of Information Technology, in order to fix the problems. In your email to all UT Faculty and Staff on February 28, 2007 regarding Organizational Structure you noted that "each campus and institute will have responsibility to implement and maintain campus specific IT operations" including email. I have sent two memos to you regarding email and the organization of IT at UT (February 26 and May 2, 2007 - these are posted on the UTK Faculty Senate President's web page). I have not received a response to either of these memos, nor has there been any public announcement of changes in the reporting structure of IT in the Knoxville area. I find the lack of response on these matters extremely disconcerting given the ongoing difficulties faced by faculty, staff and students. I am currently preparing my welcoming remarks for the June Board of Trustees meeting. I would appreciate a response on these matters to assist me in preparing these remarks. As noted in the May 2 memo, the prolonged uncertainty of the reporting and organizational structure for IT on this campus has been detrimental to progress in dealing with the ongoing problems. I encourage you to rapidly correct this. Sincerely, Louis J. Gross Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics Director, The Institute for Environmental Modeling President, UTK Faculty Senate http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~gross/facpres.html