INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN MANAGEMENT V - SGGW

additional application Ksantypa dedicated for the registration of candidates.
Sokrates is used by over a dozen of universities.
There is a very interesting non-commercial initiative in this area. In 2002,
rectors of 12 Polish higher schools have designated an Intercollegiate Center for
Information Technology (MUCI) for the task of computerization of these institutions.
The existence of MUCI benefits in creation of the body responsible for developing
the system in the spirit of taking into account the interests of many different
universities, and not just one. MUCI gives a better position in negotiations with
the ministerial party on the planned regulations. Studies’ Service University
System (USOS) – started at the Warsaw University –is now supervised by MUCI
and is developed in inter-university cooperation. Currently USOS is used by dozens
of universities (comprehensive IT student’s support from the start to the completing
of the studies). For example, a schedule, track of student’s advancements,
and many other tasks can be created by USOS. It is also closely integrated with the
Internet Registration of Candidates project. USOS concentrates around services for
students and has no support for financial tasks, human resources management,
university infrastructure, etc.
Finally, there are known solutions outside Poland. Companies like SAP, Oracle
– E-Business Suite or PeopleSoft have prepared the versions of their ERP systems
for higher education. Unfortunately, the Polish high education system is different
from other systems and it is impossible to simply adapt a solution implemented in
the USA.
We can summarize the above considerations and estimate the presented systems.
Four of them seem to be interesting. USOS is very useful but does not cover
the whole range of university activities; it can help but not solve all needs.
Additionally there is no commercial support for USOS, the university has to delegate
own staff to installation etc. Commercial systems HMS, Uczelnia.XP and
ProAcademia are leaders in the market, but none of them supports all tasks needed
for a university, especially a large university with many buildings and thousands of
students. A typical solution is that a university tries to integrate a number of applications,
sometimes with manual action. Private universities are smaller and more
flexible, and the mentioned commercial solutions are quite good for them, but for
big public (state) universities they are not sufficient. We have to mention that there
is one important difference between public and private universities. A public university
cannot just choose and buy a system; instead, it has to establish a proposal
and prepare a public invitation to tender. In such a case the most important factor is
price and the process of implementation is very long.
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