By Katherine Tam

Eleven University of California teams won this year's Larry L. Sautter Award for developing information technology projects that streamline operations and advance UC's teaching, research and public service mission.

Winners were honored with plaques and certificates today (Aug. 8) at the UC Computing Services Conference in Merced.

The UC Information Technology Leadership Council sponsors the award to recognize innovation and encourage faculty and staff to share creative solutions across the system.

"We try to identify those projects that may not use a new technology but may use a tried and true technology in a new way, that reach out to a broad cross-section of people, that is something that could be promulgated around the University," said David J. Ernst, associate vice president for information resources and communications who sits on the selection committee and presented the awards today.

"It's not always things that get a lot of press or the most dollars, but there's a lot of good work that goes on every day on campuses," he added.

The 2011 winning projects are:

Golden Awards for Innovation in Information Technology

• Mobile Web Framework allows faculty, staff, researchers and administrators to share information on cell phones and other mobile devices quickly and easily. The framework is being used at UCLA, where it was first developed, and at other campuses to put real-time bus schedules, maps, event information, research resources, course details and more in the palm of the hand.
• Visiting Scholar and Postdoc Affairs Project turned UC Berkeley's cumbersome paper application into an easy-to-use online application that saves $560,000 annually by reducing how much time and resources are spent processing 1,500 paper applications a year and issuing paper approval letters. Now, visiting scholars and postdocs apply online and the sponsoring departments review, approve and complete the necessary paperwork electronically.

Silver Awards for Innovation in Information Technology

• Kerberos KDC and Passphrase Upgrade Project upgraded the main technology that handles on average up to 160,000 daily authentications into UC Davis's secure automated systems, including those used to access email, report business travel expenses and conduct academic personnel reviews. It also improved the security of those systems by requiring employees, students and applicants switch from passwords to passphrases. Passphrases are a combination of words, symbols and spaces and are more secure than passwords.
• Academic Personnel On-Line Review allows UC Irvine and UC San Diego to process academic reviews electronically. A collaboration between teams at both campuses, this new online system is faster than the old format when academic reviews were done on paper, photocopies were made and documents routed to the right people by mail or intracampus messengers.
• Campus Web Toolbox allows UC San Diego departments to easily create and maintain websites and online and mobile applications by offering templates with a campus brand. It means IT developers don't have to spend thousands of hours building websites and applications from scratch; instead they use the Campus Web Toolbox, saving the campus at least $650,000 a year.
• UC San Diego Marketplace: Online Procure-To-Pay Solution creates one shopping portal where departments buy equipment or services through a common set of contracts. Everyone can browse, but certain people in each department are authorized to approve purchases. The marketplace streamlines the purchasing process and includes auditing tools.

• On-Demand Secure Circuits and Reservation System, developed by a team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, lets scientists reserve network bandwidth so they have guaranteed access at a specific time to exchange large amounts of data with colleagues.
• Real Time Location System Refrigeration and Equipment Tracking uses wireless devices to monitor the temperature in refrigerators where food and medicine is stored and alert staff if something is awry. Created by a group at the UC Davis Health System, it also locates medical equipment in the hospital so staff can find it quickly.
• UC Davis School of Medicine Admissions System uses software to transform its medical school admissions process from a sluggish, paper-based model to a nimble, electronic system. The school reduced its annual admissions cycle by five months and notifies students faster so they have more time to make a decision.
• Consolidated Billing Middleware Services, developed by a UCLA team, streamlines the billing process. Students can view fees and make payments for tuition, housing and transportation on one online system or by going to one cashier office. Before, students visited multiple websites or cashier offices.
• Biohazard Use Authorization application replaces UC San Diego's labor-intensive 14-page paper application with an electronic system that makes the process for getting approval to use biohazard materials for research or teaching more efficient.

The annual award program, launched in 2000, is named for Larry L. Sautter, a UC Riverside associate vice chancellor for computing and communications who died in 1999. Under his leadership, a modern data network, client server computing and improved technical support services were developed and implemented at Riverside.

More information, including the applications for each project, is available at the Sautter Award Program website: www.ucop.edu/irc/itlc/sautter/.

Katherine Tam is a communications coordinator in Internal Communications at UC's Office of the President. For more news, visit the UC Newsroom or follow us on Twitter.