Students at SNU usually start to feel stressed as the course registration period nears. The typical SNU student has to wake up at seven in the morning to compete with her fellow schoolmates for the classes she intends on taking. If the class she wants to take is 'popular' or well known among her friends, the rate of competition multiplies exponentially. But it wasn't just competition she had to deal with in the past; the students frequently faced server shutdown of the course registration website and other big and small errors as well.

In September of last year, half of SNU's enrolled students had to go through the course registration process all over again because the school administration mistakenly opened the whole class size of all the classes to students whose ID ended with an odd number. SNU operates course registration on separate dates for students with even and odd number IDs in order to cope with server capacity. On each registration date, half the slots for each class are opened to each group of students according to school policy. Consequently, the students with an odd number ID had to redo the registration process, resulting in complaints from students who had to adjust their summer plans - as some students even had to push back their flight departure dates. It was the talk of the campus, after which the person responsible for the confusion resigned.

In order to reduce these frequent errors and more efficiently administer school information, Seoul National University is planning to build the next generation of the Integrated Administration Information System 12 years after the current system was set up in 1998.

Since last September SNU has gone ahead with the establishment of an 'Information Strategy Plan (ISP)' for the construction of the new Integrated Administration Information System. On September 9, SNU signed a contract with Daewoo Information Systems which is a systems integrator (SI) company and launched a task force with Jung Joo Jahng, vice director of the University Computer Center (UCC) as the team leader. The new plan is in full force.

HAN Joon Koo, the director of UCC, said,"The original system built in 1998 is so old that the computer model to control this system has been discontinued. It was also developed for the administration organization at that time therefore there have been a lot of problems managing rapidly changing SNU and its informational data. We hope to be able to manage all necessary information for operating the school at once with the new Integrated Administration Information System."

Regarding suspicions as to whether it is not a project in preparation for the incorporation of SNU - the recently heated debate as to whether SNU should be run like a private school, in which case commercialization of the campus and higher tuition rates, but a more efficient administration are likely- Director Han asserted,"It has nothing to do with SNU's potential incorporation. This plan is not only for management information system construction useful for the potential incorporation of SNU but is for an overall increase in efficiency of the administration system."

Although this plan has been under discussion since 2002, because the estimated costs exceeded ten billion Korean won (approximately 9 million USD) it was repeatedly called off. Director Han added,"There are still difficulties with procuring the necessary funds for this project. We plan on resolving this issue and completing this system as early as sometime next year."

Written by LEE BoYoung, SNU English Editor
Bylee0708@gmail.com