At UCI, the savings pile up because the paper doesn't
// EDUCATION: Officials say high-tech E-mail
approach saves time as well as paper.
DATE 03/20/94
NEWSPAPER THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SECTION NEWS
EDITION MORNING
PAGE a01
STORY LENGTH 38 INCHES
HEADLINE At UCI, the savings pile up because the paper doesn't
// EDUCATION: Officials say high-tech E-mail
approach saves time as well as paper.
BYLINE/CREDIT DAN FROOMKIN:The Orange County Register
SUBJECT TERMS OC:COLLEGES:EDUCATION:COMPUTERS:TECHNOLOGY
The University of California, Irvine, is going so high-tech,
it's pushing the envelope -- right out of existence.
Many universities and corporations are doing business
electronically these days, but few have gone as far as UCI.
UCI administrators estimate that through wide use of E-mail,
computer bulletin boards and electronic transfers, paper use is
down 3 million sheets a year.
"It's not just the savings in paper, although we like to save
paper," said Vice Chancellor Wendell Brase. "The paper is just a
symptom of processes which tend to be overly complicated."
Many messages that used to be sent through interoffice mail are
now zapped from desktop computer to desktop computer.
Manuals that used to be printed thousands of times over are now
available -- always in their most up-to-date form -- through the
university's "gopher," a program that guides users through computer
bulletin boards.
Even personnel documents and expense reimbursements now fly
through cyberspace, never touching down.
"Paper-based processes cost more than is typically realized
because the labor increments are small, intrinsic and taken for
granted: delivering the mail, opening the mail, logging it in,
copying, printing, filing, handling, searching for it in the files,
discarding it and recycling or removing the waste stream," Brase
wrote in an E-mail message to the Register.
In fact, Brase said, the time and money saved by cutting down on
paper use is the reason the university staff has been able to keep
up with administrative duties despite substantial budget cuts.
"Imagine that only three minutes' worth of labor is saved per
page. Multiplied by 3 million pages, this equates to 100
person-years of labor," he wrote.
In the trenches, response generally has been extremely positive.
"It cuts down on an awful lot of busywork," said Donna Hedman, a
program assistant in the English department.
Some mail still arrives in envelopes -- meaning it has to be
opened, read, and, more often than not, thrown in the garbage.
But when it arrives by computer, "you just (hit the) alt-delete
(keys) and it's gone," Hedman said delightedly.
Hallie Willoughby, an administrative assistant in the executive
vice chancellor's office, often sends out memos to large mailing
lists. She used to have to print them, make copies and put each in
an envelope.
"Now I just hit a button and it goes wherever I want it to," she
said.
Of course, no big change is without problems -- and skeptics.
One obvious drawback is that not everyone is online. Though most
people in the sciences have long been hooked up to the university's
massive research computers, some folks in the arts and humanities
are still not on the network.
"I'm one of the dinosaurs, I guess," said history Professor
Keith Nelson. He has a computer at his desk, but his building is
one of the few still not jacked into the network -- and he doesn't
have a modem to call in by phone.
"I understand from my colleagues that E-mail is terrific,"
Nelson said. But like others without a computer address, he gets
computer-generated memos in printed form, in his nonelectronic
mailbox.
And that process remains far from efficient -- partly because of
the unintelligible routing codes the network creates to get things
where they belong.
"I get three paragraphs of introduction that I can't make head
or tails of, followed by an eight-word message," Nelson said.
Another problem is that computers alone don't guarantee
efficiency.
"Sometimes old habits get in the way, and it's possible to kind
of replicate old processes with new technology," Brase conceded.
"It's very possible to have a cluttered desktop on a machine,
just as it is on a horizontal surface."
If you don't go through your mail -- electronic or paper -- it
piles up.
And lastly, nobody is exactly sure how much of what is delivered
electronically gets routed one more time -- to the recipient's
printer.
"If we send out electronic mail and then somebody else prints
out 25 copies to give to everyone in their department, all we've
done is shift the printing somewhere else," said William Parker,
associate executive vice chancellor.
Parker said efficiency rather than paper-saving is his favorite
part of electronic communication. E-mail works better than the
telephone for most purposes, he said. And the most current
information about the university is now much more easily available
-- both to staff and to the public.
Everything staff members can get by "gopher" is also available
to any of the approximately 15 million users of the Internet.
"We have a coexistence of paper and electronic," Parker said.
"We're not going to be a paperless administration, but hopefully
we'll be paper-sparse."
Parker's office recently kicked off an "E-mail for Everyone"
campaign, with the goal of getting all staff members online.
And students are next.
"We'd like to be able to send all of our exchanges with students
electronically, too," he said.
Like other research universities, UCI already had a massive
computer network up and running long before it became fashionable
to get hooked on electronic communication.
But even compared to its peers, UCI seems to be ahead of the
game when it comes to doing its routine business on the networks.
"There's a lot of competition between the UC campuses to see
which one of us can come up with new ideas first," Brase said.
Universities that have less computer infrastructure are
straggling -- but heading in the same direction.
At California State University, Fullerton, for example, E-mail
use varies from department to department.
Computers are being used there to increase efficiency and save
paper -- but only through desktop publishing.
Instead of sending out newsletters and memos with the
"typewriter look," many are designed and typeset in a more compact
form -- and reproduced with copiers that print on both sides of the
paper.
But the university is embarking on a major computer wiring
program, and -- like many campuses and corporations -- aims to follow
UCI's lead.