The $4 million computer project, My UA Portal, was originally scheduled to be released for use by students and faculty by summer of 2005, however technical problems and statewide convergence have held up its release.

"Somebody set a date when they wanted to see it without realizing all the work involved trying to have three major campuses with different ways of doing business all work together," said Rick Weems, chair of My UA coordinating team.

My UA Portal is university-wide computer portal designed for users to reach information and services of interest in three clicks or less and will be implemented during spring semester.

Weems has been with the project for more than a year and has watched the project grow and evolve. As chair for the project he tracks the progress of the different issues facing the My UA Portal during weekly teleconferences with members of the various committees involved in the portal.

Weems said there are some misconceptions about the project, which unites the university computer system across the state.

"It was never a one-year project, it was five years," Weems said.

There are five working groups, representing each of the four major administrative units, and one cross-MAU technical group. A group represents each campus as well as one group representing statewide, which is the UA systems office.

During their Nov. 18th video teleconference meeting, Weems went through all the items on the agenda, noting the progress of the system from each group. From the meeting it was determined that roughly 90 percent of the My UA Portal is complete.

Steve Smith, steering committee co-chair for My UA Portal, said the project is set to release and is running.

"MyUA has been running in production mode since summer. But that simply means we have been running it as if it were a live application like the banner system or email or the Blackboard system. This allows us to fine tune and make sure we have everything right for the time it is available generally to users. MyUA, because of its complexity and its application across all campuses, presented some unique problems," Smith said.

The main problems the teams have faced are issues with authentication and e-mail. Currently, each UA campus has their own unique e-mail address that is separate from the other campuses. With My UA Portal, the e-mail will become the same system-wide.

Another major factor in the delay of getting the portal online has been the integration of the many UA campuses to work off of one system. Each campus has had its own way of doing things in the past and it has been difficult to make changes.

The My UA Portal project was originally budgeted at $4 million to be used over a five year period, with funds coming from the UA foundation, IT budget, an HP credit and a network fee, which is paid for by UA students.

"Additional functions will continue to be added as they become available or as the programming is completed to add in existing applications. In addition, since one of the features of My UA is personalization by each individual, we anticipate that the look of My UA will slowly evolve over the first year or two of operation as more and more people customize it for their own needs and tastes," Smith said.

Smith said the first iteration of the portal would be more of a starting point.

"My UA Portal will be shown to the board of regents at their December meeting in Anchorage and should be ready for general availability across campuses with the start of the spring semester unless we run into significant difficulties finishing this last identity sign-on piece of work. However, each campus across the system will be electing exactly when and how to roll My UA out for their respective students and faculty and staff," said Smith.

Tom Moyer, My UA Portal project manager, said the project has cost $1.6 million thus far. Approximately $500,000 was spent on one-time costs, such as software and hardware to get the project started.

"It's been an ongoing challenge to work with such a huge, diverse system," said Moyer.

Although delays and technical difficulties have caused problems for the portal, the chair of the My UA Portal team, Rick Weems, said he thinks a lot of progress has been made.

"I think the portal actually is moving along well for a 16-campus system trying to bring a standardized IT structure into being to make them all work together so that when [a student] signs on it's seamless," Weems said."Magic happens."

For more information on the My UA Portal visit: www.alaska.edu/myua

The Northern Light is the Sun Star's sister paper at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Visit them online at http://light.uaa.alaska.edu