versions of Kuali that provide value for installation or integra-
tion beyond the basic Kuali software. Affiliates may also offer
other types of training, documentation, or hosting services.
At this writing Kuali has enrolled ten commercial
affiliates including two longtime affiliates, the rSmart Group
and IBM. An rSmart customer, Strathmore University of
Nairobi, Kenya, was the first-known adopter of the Phase I
version of Kuali Financials. Even some Kuali partner insti-
tutions are using the services of commercial affiliates to help
them implement the KFS.
The Kuali Financials Board
The Kuali Financials Board was responsible for directing
the development of the Kuali Financial System. It was com-
posed of two representatives from each partner institution,
one of whom was a senior IT manager and the other a senior
finance manager. Although both representatives from each
institution attended the board meetings and participated in
the discussions, only one of them had a vote. Wheeler was
the Chairperson and Walsh the Executive Director and vot-
ing member for Indiana University. NACUBO and rSmart
each had one nonvoting member on the board.
The board met weekly via a telephone conference
call and had a face-to-face meeting every three months. The
meetings were chaired by Wheeler. An agenda was distrib-
uted before the meeting, and they followed the agenda.
Usually the first thing on the agenda was a five- to ten-
minute discussion of the status report of where the develop-
ment stood. Then they went on to larger issues that needed
resolving. While the telephone conferences worked well,
they tried to deal with the more contentious issues at the
quarterly face-to-face meetings.
Initially the board was primarily concerned with start-
ing up the project and setting policies and procedures and
organizational arrangements that would make for success.
The board set up the organizational structure and populated it
with employees from the partner institutions. It also formu-
lated the following vision, mission, and scope statements:
Project Vision
Kuali is dedicated to providing and maintaining a richly
featured financial system for use by its member institu-
tions. The consortium will work to ensure that:
The baseline of the new system is FIS.
Its financial system modules meet GASB and FASB
standards.
The system enables a strong control environment.
Thoughtful and timely changes are made to keep
pace with advances in both technology and business.460 Part III • Acquiring Information Systems
No one member bears the bulk of the cost for, or
reaps the overwhelming majority of the benefit/profit
from, system development.
An efficient governance and administrative structure
is created and maintained to support the member
institutions with new or improved functionality,
fixes, and service releases.Project Mission
Create a comprehensive suite of functionality to serve the
financial system needs of all Carnegie Class institutions. The
design will be an enhancement of the proven functionality of
Indiana University’s Financial Information System (FIS).Project Scope
Kuali Financial Systems will be based on the existing
Indiana University FIS design. Conformance with FIS
provides the fundamental basis for Kuali scope control.
The basic presumption of Kuali Financial Systems is con-
formity with FIS, including preservation of where the FIS
software is configurable beyond the IU implementation
and configuration decisions.
The following shows the release phases and the
modules contained in each.Phase I Deliverables
Chart of Accounts
Financial Transactions/General Ledger
Kuali Nervous System (KNS)
Kuali Enterprise Workflow (KEW)Phase II Deliverables
Accounts Payable/Purchasing
Labor Ledger
Contracts & GrantsPhase III Deliverables
Accounts Receivable
Budget Construction
Capital Assets ManagementDetailed information about module specifics was
presented in the Kuali Scope Statement.
The Kuali Nervous System in Phase I is unlike the
rest of the modules in that it is a toolbox that has been so
useful in developing the system that it has been expanded
into a suite of middleware named Rice and made available
for use as a part of a development environment as well as
to expand or modify the KFS. It was named the “Nervous