The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system hasn’t provided adequate oversight of contractors hired to help overhaul its computer network, and upgrades were made without enough thought paid to the end user, according to a report released Tuesday.

MnSCU has budgeted about $60 million so far for sweeping upgrades of the network shared by the system’s 32 colleges and universities, and the Legislative Auditor reported it has improved the network’s stability, capacity and reliability.

But the "system’s management of the projects has been weak, with too little input regarding user needs, too little user support once projects were implemented, and too little evaluation of contractors’ performance," the report found.

The spending so far hasn’t necessarily translated into better service. Auditors surveyed the system’s presidents and 69 percent said the quality of service from the IT division has stayed the same or declined in the past three years despite the new spending.

Likewise, MnSCU students are still complaining about difficulties transferring credits between schools and registering online despite the MnSCU’s past efforts to create "seamless" student services, the audit said.

"We’ve seen some improvement, but there’s a lot of work yet to be done," Legislative Auditor James Nobles said Tuesday during a hearing on the audit.

Among the audit’s recommendations for the IT division are that it needs to survey campus users about what they need, make contractors more accountable and do a better job of tracking projects to make sure they get done on time and cost effectively. It didn’t give any examples of misconduct by contractors, however.

Chancellor James McCormick said the board and the system’s top staff would start reviewing the auditor’s recommendations on Wednesday. "We welcome what I consider to be constructive criticism," McCormick said.

He said some of the criticism of the information technology division was premature. He said the system needed to hire consultants two years ago to "jump start" the upgrade process and their work is now being transferred to system employees.

Further, he said, most of the spending so far has been in the foundations of the system "so you don’t see that kind of result for the students or the colleges or the universities," he said. "I think that’s the next phase."

Upgrades to the computer system in the past year will allow MnSCU to address some of the students’ concerns because administrators now have the computer power to do so. "Now we have the horsepower to do these other things," said Scott Thiss, a MnSCU trustee at the meeting.

The report also examined nine other "system office" functions that the central office performs for the campuses. It gave high marks to some functions, including internal auditing and legal services, but it said that overall, the MnSCU board needs to improve its oversight of back office spending.

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On the Net:

Minnesota State College and Universities System: http://www.mnscu.edu/index.php

Office of the Legislative Auditor: http://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/