KRA - Kuali Research Administrative System

Kuali Research Administration System

(Start Date: January 2007)

Project Goals:

The Kuali Research Administration (KRA) project applies the Kuali model of enlisting higher education institutions to collaborate as partners in the design and development of a research administration system to the mutual benefit of the entire higher education community. As with other Kuali projects, a significant grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation inspires partner institutions to bring their resources to the project and a KRA Board of senior representatives oversees their deployment in accordance with the model through a project manager.

A significant part of this process is the wholesale adoption of the functionality in a proven system, thereby avoiding the inertia of a “clean sheet” design. The KRA partner institutions have therefore agreed, from the outset, on the functional components that the project will deliver and chose MIT’s existing Coeus system as its baseline design. KRA will then fill in functionality missing from Coeus, update its technical architecture for easier integration with other administrative systems, and release open source software backed by the Kuali Foundation.

Following is the high level KRA project timeline:

Phase 1 - July 07 - March 08

Proposal & Budget Development
- Proposal Development
- Budget Development
- Routing Form
- Grants.gov Integration
Institutional Review Board (IRB) / Human Subjects
Awards
Conflict of Interest

Phase 2 - April 08 - June 09

Institute Proposal / Negotiations
Report Tracking
Subcontracts

Phase 3

Cost Share Commitment Tracking
Animal Care and Use
Bio-Safety Management
Sub recipient Monitoring
Export Controls / ITAR Management
Chemical Tracking System

Investing partners/Leading Institutions:

The following KRA founding partners are contributing functional and technical resources and staff to coordinated project teams:

*PI school: Bradley C. Wheeler, Indiana University, PI

Project Highlights:

Several activities were deemed necessary to establish a solid foundation for the KRA project.

1. Complete a technical gap analysis to assure that the Coeus functionality could be re-factored;

2. Complete the Coeus migration proof of concept to assure the community that KRA represented a valid path going forward;

3. Complete a Version 1.0 scope document;

4. Create KRA Code Generator based on the Kuali Nervous System;

5. Create detailed project plan and estimates.

A series of workshops were held at the various partner institutions to focus on the above and throughout the first six months of 2007, all were accomplished. During this period, a full time project manager, Andy Slusar, was hired at Cornell.

Milestones and Deliverables:
Last 12 months (February 2007-January 2008)

Accomplishments

1. Completed initial release of Proposal Development Screens. User testing is underway, user feedback is positive and bug fixes are being turned around quickly.

2. Completed Rice Workflow gaps – ready for testing

3. Completed Grants.Gov Submission Engine

4. Conducting second round of design critiques with faculty and research administrators

5. Began Budget development tasks.

6. Began Grants.gov UI development tasks

Ongoing Activities

1. Continued LBA review of specs

2. Continued Proposal Development module development tasks

3. Continued working with the Functional SMEs to complete specs

4. Continued technical review of Specs

5. Continued working on HTML mocks

6. Continued discussion of UI with subgroup

7. Continued screening consulting candidates

8. Continued discussions relating to Document Locking and Session Timeout with SMEs

9. Continued QA process- KRA Testing Overview

Next 12 months (February 2008-Dec 2008)

1. Rice Workflow Gap work

2. Begin User Documentation and Help using the same documentation expert that did the KFS work

3. Complete remaining Rice Gaps

4. Developer/Lead SME Face to Face tentatively scheduled for week of February 25

5. Prepare COEUS User group presentations

6. Development Phase Kickoff

7. Updated KRA to Rice 0.9 release (Rice Extraction)

8. Completed Proposal Development Coding

9. Complete Gratns.Gov S2S

10. Complete Budget Development Coding

11. Complete KRA Rice enhancements necessary to accommodate new requirements that arose as a result of

12. Complete Interfaces

13. Complete QA

14. Complete Release 1

Community:

The bi-annual Kuali Days conferences have emerged as the primary community development events for Kuali and now have separate tracks for Financial Systems, Research Administration, Student and the Rice middleware. 320 people attended the most recent event in Tempe, AZ in November 2007 and the numbers would have exceeded that had the Foundation not chosen to close registration three weeks before the event because of fire marshal rules about meeting space limits. The most recent events were:

Kuali Days IV, May 21-22, 2007 St Louis, MO

Kuali Days V, November 13-14, 2007 Tempe, AZ

Future dates include:

Kuali Days VI, Chicago, IL, May 12-15

Kuali Days VI, TBD, Nov 2008

Another emerging activity is the Kuali Developer Boot Camp. The most recent was held Jan 22-26, 2008, on the Colorado State University campus in Fort Collins, CO. Initially, these were aimed at new developers being tendered by investing partners in the various Kuali initiatives, but it is now clear that there will be a need to serve developers from schools that are planning implementations.

New Commercial affiliates have joined the Kuali Foundation within the past year including Huron Consulting Group, IBM, Exeter, and Syntel. Among these, The Huron Group specializes in the higher education research community.

Sustainability:

The Kuali Foundation sought input on the issue of sustainability for Kuali Financial Systems and following is the proposed process:

Sustainability for Kuali Systems

Introduction

Sustainability of any software product is important to the purchasers and users of systems. Ultimately it will factor into the decision to purchase software from a vendor. Vendors typically promise ongoing releases of new and improved products. Such assurances by those with a business mission of software production and support can create a barrier for open source solutions. Although proponents of open source argue that these guarantees are ultimately a myth, the process for maintaining and improving software in open source needs to evolve and meet the need for sustainability.

Background

The Kuali Foundation is dedicated to the collaborative design and development of quality higher education administrative systems. To better reflect the collaborative nature of development and delivery, Kuali replaced the term “open” with “community.” Community Source means that institutions pool people and financial resources to create mutually beneficial software that can be shared. Collaborations such as Sakai, uPortal, and the Open Source Portfolio have demonstrated the success of community source approaches, but the Kuali Financial System, is the first in a line of core administrative systems. Future systems already under design will address research, student, and endowment management.

The Kuali Foundation has said that the systems created by Kuali will be quality systems that are maintained and improved upon. Although anyone can download and customize community source software, mission critical administrative systems like Kuali Financials must demonstrate that maintenance and improvements can be sustained within an uncompromised controlled environment. Kuali sustainability includes commitments of ongoing, periodic releases of functionality that can be depended on, that add value to institutions, and that meet any changes that have occurred from a compliance mandate. Sustainability is a feature of any software that should be addressed. However, because community source is not currently the perceived traditional software vendor route, sustainability must be rigorously tackled and demonstrated.

How will this be achieved?

The goal of achieving a process of sustainability for community source must include the unique characteristics that make community source attractive, as well as those nuances that have made the Kuali project successful. These distinctions have included:

· A team of functional experts that scopes and prioritizes all requirements

· An IT infrastructure that analyzes requirements for coding in order to ensure consistency and quality

· Review, approval and testing of functionality in the code by functional users

· Collaboration amongst multiple institutions with a focus on best practices that will satisfy most of higher education

· Free sharing of thoughts, ideas and code

· A Kuali user conference that allows for ongoing sharing of ideas and education of the system.

· A robust website to provide prospective users with functional and technical documentation; the ability to review the system on-line; and complete information about the systems and project.

These success factors must extend to ongoing customer service assistance for both technical and functional questions. The above must also appeal to those currently shopping for new systems and those planning a migration strategy to newer technology that will be available for the future. By having a well outlined process that meets these objectives, Kuali will be able to affirmatively say they have met the sustainability challenge.

A successful sustainability model for Kuali should include all of the following:

1. Preparation for ongoing releases of Kuali software. These expected releases provide assurance to users that the software is well maintained, that it is evolving to be a better product, and that compliance issues are being addressed in releases.

2. Continuing commitments by institutions using the system to provide ongoing committed developer resources to the project. Only through ongoing donation of developers, managed by the foundation, will the system be able to grow and provide enhancements that will make the system the best choice for higher education.

3. The Kuali foundation must have a minimum number of developers on staff as Kuali employees who will provide the baseline changes to the system that meet mandates that come down from various federal agencies and accounting standard boards. These developers would also view donated code to make sure it adheres to the guidelines established by the Kuali Technical Council and to wrap and submit releases.

4. Kuali must be open to accepting functionality developed by other institutions. As referred above, this code would have to be reviewed. But the essence of open source supports this donation process. Kuali Foundation must provide detailed documentation that outlines how code must be written and what framework should be followed. This framework should be advertised to put other institutions in a position to write code that meets the requirements. Donations that do not meet these standards should not be accepted.

5. A Functional Council that addresses evolving business office needs. The Functional Council process that currently exists for the Kuali Research Administration System should evolve and exist after Release 3.0 of that system. A functional council is key and must:

a. Review and prioritize lists of needed functionality

b. Review and approve projects slated for development, either donated or Kuali staff developed

c. Vet donated code for functional efficiency and compliance

d. Facilitate and provide assistance with testing

e. Review and sign off on documentation

The Functional Council is donated resources which for this activity report to the Kuali Research Administration System Board. Expenditures for the KRAFC will be financed by the Kuali Foundation.

The functional council chair should be a voting member of the Kuali Research Administration System Board.

6. An organizational structure with staff who will provide ongoing annual conferences that service the needs of both functional and development staff.

7. Commercial affiliates will provide a role in identifying functionality that is needed through their ongoing support of customers and implementations. A process will be available for commercial affiliates to provide donated resources to the Kuali Foundation for development, functional expertise, or donation of developed code.

Critical Mass must be achieved in order for the Kuali Research Administrationl System to be successful. Without a well documented sustainability model, too many doubts exist about the ongoing life of Kuali products. The model established by the Kuali Foundation to meet demands of sustainability is one that could be repeated across all Kuali products.

Executive Director, Kuali Foundation:

The Kuali Foundation is seeking to fill an Executive Director position. The ED is responsible for the successful planning and operations of the Kuali Foundation. He or she will develop priorities for the organization, create and implement plans, and coordinate programmatic initiatives, technology, and work effort across the various Kuali initiatives. He or she will develop and maintain effective partnerships with other organizations to foster interoperability and cohesion within the enterprise software development community. Also, the ED will manage the fiscal and human resources of the Foundation. The incumbent must be able to activate and organize the community in order to respond quickly to new challenges with well-conceived solutions that meet the needs of the Kuali Foundation members. The ED will have responsibility for maintaining and increasing the Kuali Foundation revenue. This will include communication with members, recruiting new members, and retaining existing members, as well as development of grant proposals.

A search committee was appointed at the Kuali Days event in Tempe. After a position description was created, the position was widely advertised nationally and applications have been accepted. A short list of candidates is to be interviewed in February with a goal of making an appointment in March, 2008.

Marketing/Evangelism:

As noted above, the Kuali Days events represent a focal point of community development, but there are several other avenues emerging to complement this. The Kuali Commercial Affiliates (KCAs) have been active in engaging prospective institutions that plan implementations. Some of the KCAs are doing cross marketing and cooperative efforts, while others pursue solo directions.

The appointment of the Executive Director will greatly focus the Kuali Foundations attention on marketing and evangelism.

Synergy with other projects:

The KRA Development Team is working with the Kuali Rice, Kuali Financial Systems and Kuali Student initiatives on integration solutions. Some specific areas that have already been identified as potential integration

Utilizing Sakai for online collaboration within the project

Would like to deliver uPortal portlets for KFS services in the future.

Would like to investigate the use of Fedora for document and image sharing.

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KRA - Kuali Research Administrative System

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