Issue date: 5/28/08 Section: Campus

Eschenbach was brought on before Huron was chosen to work on the project, and NU staff also conduct reviews, Schober said.

"Ultimately ESEC owns the risk of consulting multiple sources of when they think about how the project is going," Schober said. "I have regular meetings with two out of the five, and they also get a regular report on the project's status from NU staff on a monthly basis."

Vice President for Information Technology Mort Rahimi and Vice President for Business and Finance Eugene Sunshine, both ESEC members, were unavailable for comment despite multiple attempts. Eschenbach did not return a phone or e-mail message seeking comment.

Increases in funding this year were partly because consulting needs were underestimated, but also because the project increased in scope, Schober said. A separate project was absorbed into Project Café last summer before budget requests were made.

"The data systems project was basically brought into Project Café," he said. "A decent amount of the costs that we needed are attributable to that."

IT departments at other universities did not respond to inquiries about their consulting practices, but Kellogg professors Adam Galinsky and Keith Murnighan both said, speaking generally, such an arrangement could constitute a conflict of interest.

Consultants should not be placed in positions where they can evaluate an employer's staff if there is a financial incentive to rate them poorly and increase their profits, said Galinsky, who studies ethics.

An arrangement like Project Café presents a conflict of interest, but one that can be mitigated if the consultant's advice is considered with its bias in mind, said Murnighan, who studies risk management.

"If I'm a consulting firm, and I'm supplying you with people, would you get the best advice from me? Probably not," he said. "But everybody should be able to identify how helpful my ulterior motives would be."

In the long run, Schober said Project Café may not be immediately visible to the students, but the university will benefit as a whole.

"Most functions will not be used by students," he said. "The main visible benefit for the students will be that the offices that you visit will run better."



m-gsovski@northwestern.edu

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