Accountability
The portal project team reports to a Steering Committee that determines what is included in the scope of the project, oversees the expenditure of funds and manages the key delivery dates. The Steering Committee is composed of:

• Dr. Phil Wood, AVP Student Affairs (Chair)
• Lou Ariano, Registrar (Vice Chair)
• Debbie Barrett, CIO
• Dr. Brian Detlor, School of Business
• Dr. Fred A. Hall, AVP Academic
• Vivian Lewis, Assoc. Librarian
• Kyra Machen, VP Education, MSU
• Gina Robinson, Student Affairs
• Lillian Scime, AVP Administration

The project team also reports to the Refining Directions Committee to justify the expenditure of funds allocated by that Committee.

The MSU is represented on the Steering Committee by the VP Education.

Objectives
The objectives of the student portal project are to:

• Support the Refining Directions goals "to provide an innovative and stimulating learning environment where students can prepare themselves to excel in life" and "to build an inclusive community with a shared purpose"
• Support the University Technology Strategy
• Support students' expectations for integrated and on-line services and positively impact student assessment of services
• Identify priorities and craft a road map for integration of student services through a student portal
• Implement a portal that promotes self-servies and provides comprehensive on-line services to students in a way that:
  • Improves on the current services - providing existing services in a more unified, easily accessible way and adding new services
  • Provides single sign-on to all portal services
  • Makes McMaster competitive with its peers, addressing today's needs and positioning us for future development to benefit students, faculty, and staff
  • Complies with web accessibility standards to at least an AA level
• Implement portal technology that:
  • Can, in future, be used for portals directed to faculty and staff
  • Allows faculties, departments and ancillary services to plug in their content and functionality at significantly reduced cost
  • Reduces maintenance effort allowing increased development at the same cost
  • Reduces the time to implement new functionality
  • Complies with industry standards to allow integration of standard portlets
  • Promotes efficient business processes (eg: online payment)
• Implement middleware technology that moves the University towards a Service Orientated Architecture which will allow for more code re-use and increase flexibility of infrastructure components
• Implement a governance process that fairly and equitably represents stakeholder interests in the maintenance of the portal
• Implement a business continuity plan that deals with sudden increases in load, equipment failure and loss of a server room, building or part of campus

Measuring Success
We will measure our success using the following metrics:

• Hours unavailable/downtime
• Response Time (login/page loads)
• Student Satisfaction Rating (Globe and Mail, Might require new survey, NSSE)
• Process Handling time - reduced lineups/wait time during peak periods
• Support Handling Time
• Reduced redundancy in support materials
• New services to market, # of new features deliverd thru portal
• % use, adoption, response, traffic + stickiness/retention
• CPU Usage

	Do you have questions or comments regarding the Student Portal Project? The Portal Project Team would like to hear from you. Visit the contact page for more information.