A new, more user-friendly Student Information System that eliminates the use of Social Security numbers is being developed and could be implemented in two years, an Ohio University official said.

“We should make it as clean and simple as possible and sort out all the behind-the-scenes,” said Bill Sams, OU’s chief information officer and chair of the 18-member executive committee working on the system.

The system will cost $10 million to $20 million, Sams said, and the Board of Trustees must approve the funding proposal.

On May 15, the committee sent requirements for the system to software vendors and responses are due back by June 30, said Shelley Ruff, committee member and assistant vice president for finance. By the end of summer, the committee aims to present a finalized plan to the Board of Trustees to tentatively begin implementation in February 2007, according to the Student Information System Software proposal.

“They authorize the expenditure,” Sams said. “Then we’ll work out how it gets funded.”

A student information system contains academic data, financial and housing information, he said.

The new system will be more Web-based and more uniform across departments, Sams said, adding that administrative areas have developed their own procedures to solve problems specific to that department. The current system, developed by the INFORMS company, is 13 years old and based on 20-year-old mainframe computer technology, Sams said.

The new system will be user-friendly for students, said William Perry, project leader of the current student information system.

“It’ll have a lot of self-service, so it doesn’t take walking to a hall to take care of business,” he said.

Other suggested changes for the new system include a single, easy sign-on and an easy interface for users to navigate, said Alana Miller, head of a 15-member Student Senate focus group that met in the fall to discuss the Student Information System.

“We can currently view our DARS online, but it might also be helpful to get your RAC — that’s only available in a paper copy,” she said.

The alterations to the Student Information System likely will not change the Oracle Financial Management System used for human resources and finance, Perry said. Oracle is part of the Enterprise Project, implemented in 2001 to update administrative information systems, which was allotted $11 million by the Board of Trustees, according to a 1999 Outlook article. This system and the new Student Information System will have to communicate, though, Perry said.

In the past four to five months, the SIS executive committee has been developing a list of requirements to send to software vendors, Sams said.

About four to six weeks ago, the committee made an online survey with hundreds of questions regarding changes to the system, and about 278 faculty, staff and students responded, Sams said.

“There are over 2,000 specific things we want the system to do,” he said.

Under the new system, security will be bolstered, Ruff said

“We’re going to have pretty stringent security files,” she said.

There is a big push to stop the use of Social Security numbers, Sams said, though he said the Student Information System project has not been affected by the April 24 breach of security. The incidents made more than 137,800 Social Security numbers of alumni and donors and 60,000 students’ health records, which also contain Social Security Numbers, vulnerable to theft, according to a May 26 Post article.

“Clearly, we’ve got a lot of people working on the security incident, but (the new system is) not affected it to date,” Sams said.

In response to the breach, OU President Roderick McDavis said the university had already been planning to update the system, according to a May 2 Post article.

“This creates for us an opportunity to go beyond servers with sensitive information,” he said.