There are items in the IT Plan that have not yet been addressed by the CIO Council. There are numerous definitions of portals. Some providers may represent themselves as an official portal to the campus even though they are not, some vendors sell portal software to campuses, and some vendors offer free portal services in return for student viewers. The results of a systemwide survey of portal activities was distributed. At this time no UW System institutions are deeply involved in these activities.
Campuses can expect to be contacted by portal vendors in the near future.
An alternative is to leverage the Learning Innovations efforts in building a student management system as a portal. UW System Administration has traditionally taken an approach to shy away from advertising to avoid the appearance of endorsing a particular product. However it is very attractive for a student to have one place to go to register and receive other services associated with online learning. There are also issues surrounding co-branding, such as the case where an online bookstore provides a page that has a UW institution logo on it and lists books that are appropriate to that campus. The institution gets a kickback on purchases in return for providing its book list and the use of its logo.