Changing a School's Tech Disposal Policy?

An anonymous reader writes "I attend a state university where a new building has recently been put in, and a new budget put in place. They have decided to upgrade all the computer systems involved in the department, with a few slight exceptions. From my limited understanding, State policy is that we cannot just let things go, they have to be sent back to the state capital in order to take them off the books. Then they put them in the dumpster. I feel that this is a huge waste of useful machines (some are merely two years old), but I know not how to change this. Any suggestions, or does anyone know where Illinois dumps used tech?"

It's Called Google

[iamhigh (1252742)]

This article http://www.txstate.edu/effective/UPPS/upps-05-01-02.html [txstate.edu] found in the first page when Googling "State of Texas Computer Disposal Procedure" will show that the AC truly does have a limited understanding of how things work.

FP?

Re:

[Pointy McButterpants (1183327)]

Since when was Illinois the same thing as Texas?

Re:It's Called Google

[loafula (1080631)]

This article http://www.txstate.edu/effective/UPPS/upps-05-01-02.html [txstate.edu] found in the first page when Googling "State of Texas Computer Disposal Procedure" will show that the AC truly does have a limited understanding of how things work. FP?

Maybe, but he has a phenomenal understanding of the difference between the state of Illinois and the state of Texas.

Re:

[iamhigh (1252742)]

Yeah, yeah... everyone laugh becuase I quit reading after the whole "limited understanding". Which is when I darted off to google to see what *MY* state did. But the point is that I find it hard to believe that any state at this point, just trashes used computers. Texas has been doing this for at least 15 years... and probably much longer.

Re:

[kjkeefe (581605)]

Not sure, but I believe the OP may have been high at the time... (look at his user name)

Re:It's Called Google

[gnick (1211984)]

I don't know much about Texas or Illinois (limited understanding of geography?). But, in at least one branch of the Fed, they're sent back to a central office and taken off the books. Then, they sit in large metal containers and wait until they're approved for excess so that they can be put out for auction. Then, they're forgotten about and left to age until they can't be sold. Finally, they're sent out for recycling or landfill.

Re:It's Called Google

[Moryath (553296)]

Wow... who designed this system, a Vogon? All that's missing is forms filled out in triplicate before being buried in a pile of bugblatter beast droppings!

Re:

[gnick (1211984)]

I'm fairly certain that the system isn't functioning in complete accordance with the original intent of the procedure. Although, I haven't read the official policy - I've just observed the large metal containers full of computers and monitors as they sit out in the sun and age to perfection.

But, maybe that is the official plan - I'd hate to pass judgment before all the facts are in.

Re:It's Called Google

[wootcat (1151911)]

See http://www.state.il.us/CMS/1_buying/statesurp.htm [state.il.us]

Most computer hardware is sold at surplus auctions four times a year in Illinois. I worked for Illinois government as a contractor for 9 years and saw countless pallets of PCs and Macs move through there. Lots of other cool stuff too, including a powered drafting table I picked up for $75. I locked the table flat and can raise and lower it depending if I want to work standing up or sitting down.

Re:

[onecheapgeek (964280)]

My employer (a fairly major Big East university) auctions off all old equipment. It's a way to get that final .01% return on their investments.

Great place to pick up old servers though.

Why tak ethem off the books?

[ePhil_One (634771)]

They have decided to upgrade all the computer systems involved in the department

If they are only upgrading ONE department, why not find out what other departments withing the university might be able to use them?

Re:Why tak ethem off the books?

[MBGMorden (803437)]

That's what we did when I worked as a student tech at Clemson University. Every year we made a bulk purchase of lab computers. Half the lab computers on campus got replaced. The next year the other half would be replaced (and it went back and forth such that lab machines were changed out every 2 years).

When a lab machine was retired from service, they were then distributed to the IT departments of the various colleges (though I'm sure most here understand this, I'll just explain: a University is usually broken down into smaller "colleges" even though they're all still the same school. I worked at the College of Business and Behavioral Science).

We then would clean up the machines, put a fresh image on them (since we got them in huge batches of identical configs they were easy to keep images for), and then send them out to the faculty that were running old machines. Naturally for faculty deemed special enough to deserve it they could also get a brand new computer bought during the purchase of the incoming lab machines as well.

When we finally got done with them, we'd send them to a surplus sale. The general public was free to come in and purchase them at whatever randomly low price the surplus department decided to ask for them (the prices are normally dirt cheap because we were essentially just ready to dispose of them, but since they're bought with tax dollars the public has to have a chance at aquiring surplus property).

I'm assuming that the disposal procedure is state law as I now work at another government organization in SC and the surplus procedure is pretty much the same. That can be a good place to pickup some parts though. 17" CRT monitors (which we're always getting rid of a few of since flat panels are all the rage now) generally get put up for $5. Pretty good spot to pick those up when someone needs one.

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[LoRdTAW (99712)]

Because the vendors don't get their fat contracts with the state to supply more new systems. That's why allot of equipment regardless of what it might be is destroyed by various government agencies. A sudden influx of cheap equipment cuts into the sales of new equipment. Many companies have a "destroy after end of life" clause in their government contracts.

Its a terrible waste but it ensures vendors get to sell lots of new stuff down the line without competition from liquidation auctions.

Re:Why tak ethem off the books?

[ePhil_One (634771)]

At a non profit I used to work at we did something similar. Profitable devisions upgrade their pentiums, I'd take those to the "treading water" folks to replace their 486's, then I take those 486's to the dregs running 386's. Then one day the profitable decision decided they needed to get "credit" for their dregs. I wasn't around to see how that worked out, I jumped to a "Dot Com" around then...

Options

[Archangel Michael (180766)]

http://www.computersforclassrooms.org/ [computersf...srooms.org]

While the computers need to be taken off the books, that is accomplished by paperwork. There are computer re-furbishers and recyclers like the one listed above (a non-profit 501.c.3) that will take any and all computers as donations to be recycled or deployed to schools.

Usually the biggest pain is the stupid paperwork needed by the state to remove computers from inventory systems. They ought to just expire all computers from inventory after 5 years (or whatever), automatically.

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[zappepcs (820751)]

Not only that, but you might check http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=QQO&q=homeschool+grants+law+illinois+%2Bcomputers&btnG=Search [google.com] to see if there is methods/processes for donating such 'tossed out' equipment to be provided to home schools under federal guidelines.

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[ice666 (601599)]

As one who attended a State of Illinois school, I did find out that once or twice a year they have a huge auction in Springfield where they will sell off old stuff including computers. I do also know that a lot of the stuff we sent down from Northern Illinois, was very old and had been striped of anything usable before we would let it go. I you can contact someone in a materials mgmt department they should be able to give you that information.

Re:Options

[zerocool^ (112121)]

Usually the biggest pain is the stupid paperwork needed by the state to remove computers from inventory systems. They ought to just expire all computers from inventory after 5 years (or whatever), automatically.

Having worked at virginia tech's computer science department in the past for a few years, I can tell you that what you're saying is logical, but impossible in the current government system.

The inventory people basically accept goods in, give them to you, and expect to get them back. In our situation, after that happens, they auction them off (VT auctions are like every other month, in an old warehouse looking building). The paperwork is intense. But the long and short of it is that the department cannot do anything with the computers.

Problem two is that the inventory system at Tech doesn't account for depreciation. At all.

Case in point: We had a professor create what he called a "pedoplex", which was this huge gazebo (shoot arrows into it?) looking thing that was just banks and banks of hard drives. In 199X or whatever, it cost $1.5 MILLION DOLLARS pinky to lips. Now? We'd be hard pressed to sell it for scrap metal - and I'm not kidding. Well, anyway, the guy that was the contractor that built it for the professor after a while realized that the prof wasn't using it anymore, and was like "this thing is neat, I built it and I'm proud of my work". The professor basically gave it to the guy. He moved to Pennsylvania.

SO... every year, during inventory, someone would have to go UP to PA and walk into a storage locker and go "Pedoplex: One each, check!" and drive back. Not kidding at all. Then the guy moved to Austrailia. All of a sudden, in 2005, this freaking thing shows up in our inventory, marked as "missing", with a value of negative $1.5 million. Meaning even if we had been able to locate TWO (not to mention one) of everything on our inventory list, we were still waaaaaaay over quota for dollar amount of missing equipment.

What ensues? Did we call the guy and ask if we could get into his storage locker? Did we write the piece of equipment off? Did we mark its value to be, say, $5,000? No, none of those things. The administration called the guy a thief (he was given the device), said that we lost valuable state property and should be held accountable (wtf, i'm a sysadmin, not a gopher, and this was before I was employed), and started a bickering shouting match between inventory, provost, and the department.

Your tax dollars at work!

's ok, though, after the 2nd year in a row when the professor who makes $220,000/yr for 5 hours of work per week who's my boss told me "sorry there's no money for a raise, we'll just keep paying you the legal minimum we can pay you in your pay grade", I left all that crap behind and got a job working for Rackspace, which is waaaay more awesome.

~W

Are you sure they're thrown away?

[by Anonymous Coward]

You might want to verify that they put them in the dumpster. I work in state government and all agencies here send old equipment to state surplus, which lesser funded agencies can get things out of and the leftovers are sold to the public at auctions. If your state government is just tossing all its surplus then you should contact someone in your state legislature about changing such a wasteful practice.

Re:Are you sure they're thrown away?

[Breakfast Cereal (27298)]

Me again. Um, yeah, you should spend a little time on your state government's website before asking Slashdot.

Buying from Illinois - Purchasing State Surplus Property [illinois.gov]

Re:

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

TIP: State and/or university surplus auctions are often GREAT ways to get used equipment. A friend of mine walked out with an unpopulated server rack + all mounting hardware from a University of Michigan surplus auction for like $40.

Re:Are you sure they're thrown away?

[Falstius (963333)]

Damn, could use one of those in my lab ... at the University of Michigan.

Businesses do things differently

[lukas84 (912874)]

It's perfectly normal to lease a machine for three years, while it is covered by warranty/service contract, and give it back after the lease expires.

The failure rate of old equipment goes higher and higher, and without proper maintenance contracts you'll start of getting into unstable territory.

It's perfectly OK to do it this way. It does not make sense spending an inordinate amount of resources of keeping a huge park of a variety of machines running.

Instead, standardizing on a few machines and tossing them

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[Fast Thick Pants (1081517)]

standardizing on a few machines and tossing them out when another technology renewal is due is *good*. It makes management easier and allows IT to keep things running smoothly.

Sure, it's an easy fix in the short run. But 100 years down the line when the average surface temperature is 105 degrees Fahrenheit and gasoline costs $70 a gallon, you'll be defending your water tower and solar panel arrays from the hordes, running low on ammunition, stinking like a hog... Then you'll wish you'd done your part to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

(Hopefully your boss can see the logic in this...)

Auction them off

[Caseyscrib (728790)]

Several schools run surplus sites that list all of their inventory they want to get rid of. I've bought a few (older) computers for really cheap this way.

Suggestions?

[fahrbot-bot (874524)]

I feel that this is a huge waste of useful machines (some are merely two years old), but I know not how to change this, any suggestions?

Dark clothing + ski masks + pick-up truck @ 3am ...

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[DrFalkyn (102068)]

seriously, I think you are allowed to legally 'dumpster dive' if something is thrown away, I know that it applies to people who leave stuff on the curb in residential areas, in most states that I know of.

From what little I know of Illinois politics,

[JesseL (107722)]

after the equipment is taken off the books, it's sold to the brother-in-law of some administrator for $0.50/ton. He then cleans up the PCs and sells them to government schools (via a contract he has with the superintendent, who happens to be his nephew) for 150% of what their new value was.

Govdeals.com

[Noctrnl (110574)]

Have you looked at GovDeals at all? I work for a state agency in Missouri, and all of our equipment ends up being sold to the public through that site. I also notice that Illinois has a good deal of equipment there also.

CMS auction warehouse on 10.5th St. in Springfield

[mr_mischief (456295)]

Go to http://www.state.il.us/CMS/1_buying/statesurp.htm [state.il.us], which is the firs tlink on Google when searching for "Illinois state surplus auction" for more info.

Go to our state online auction site [state.il.us] to see if they end up there, too.

There's a reason Central Management Services exists -- it's to provide the central management of the services all state agencies need to kkeep duplication of effort to a minimum. One thing all state agencies need is to dispose of surplus equipment.

Re:CMS auction warehouse on 10.5th St. in Springfi

[Plautius (626357)]

I dunno which school you mean, but at UIUC they have a big warehouse in Orchard Downs area where they keep all the surplus (also includes desks, chairs, book-cases) until it goes to the state. This is just for internal UIUC use and you require a Surplus Redistribution Form signed by your buildings facility manager. That sounds like a handful, but it's actually pretty easy to get. You are on good terms with your facility manager right?

In your specific situation I would go talk to the department office a

Are you sure you have that right?

[the_humeister (922869)]

It seems utterly wasteful. Over where I am, departments can send their used equipment (not just computers) to a central repository that's open to all other departments (and open to the public on certain days). Of course, for computer equipment, the harddrives are wiped.

Check your facts

[93 Escort Wagon (326346)]

I'm not sure if the "anonymous poster" is wrong, but I suspect he simply doesn't have any inkling of the actual process in place at the university in question.

Here at the University of Washington old tech - heck, old equipment of all sorts - has to be gotten rid of following very specific steps. Very few of those steps lead to the dumpster unless what you're discarding is truly junk. Items can be given to other departments, for one thing. Items can also be released to surplus, where the wider public will be

Surplus property

[blhack (921171)]

Most state universities have a Surplus Property building where they will auction this kind of stuff off to you. YOu can almost always get a dirt dirt cheap too. There is a 14 bay disk array full of 80gb disks that i bought (with disks) at surplus for $150. I can get dual P3 4gb Ram proliants 1Us for with 32gb scsis for $150.

Make friends with the dean, and convince them that their Univ. needs to do the same.

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[mr_mischief (456295)]

It's possible the university in question does this (Sounds like Southern Illinois University Edwardsville to me from the description), but most state agencies use the CMS surplus property route in Illinois. The university system is more independent than most state agencies, though.

Are you serious?

[whoda (569082)]

"but I know not how to change this, any suggestions, or does anyone know where Illinois dumps used tech?"

What the fuck are students actually learning these days? Is it all just memorization followed by regurgitation at the end of the week?
Isn't there any schooling on general "How to find shit out on my own" anymore?

Are you sure?

[duplicate-nickname (87112)]

A quick Google shows that many Illinois state university have surplus programs in place for handling old capital equipment. The same processes are in place at the two large universites I have worked at before.

My guess is that are are some new guy (or student) that really don't know what is going on.

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[duplicate-nickname (87112)]

In fact, here is the state law that governs this process: http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=555&ChapAct=30%C2%A0ILCS%C2%A0605/&ChapterID=7&ChapterName=FINANCE&ActName=State+Property+Control+Act [ilga.gov].

At my local university...

[CompMD (522020)]

...which is a large Big 12 school, the biology, chemistry, and physics departments generally find it easier to just put the computers out in the hallways and wait for them to disappear. I've gotten all kinds of weird old hardware from them. There are also disgruntled IT staffers that have been here a while that will happily provide hardware to friendly fellow geeks instead of sending them to the dumpster. Those folks have gotten me AUI transceivers, a few SGI workstations, and a huge box of SGI software, including several releases of IRIX 6.5. Some of the other departments will pull a computer out of retirement to serve a specifc purpose. Since I work at a spinoff of the university, I asked nicely and got a P4/Celeron box to use as a server for a joint project, and a fully equipped, mint condition, never used Sun Blade 2000 for my desk...er...for another server. :)

I'm patiently waiting for the university to retire/throw out its 8-node Origin 2000.

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[PaintyThePirate (682047)]

It's like that at my university too, though mostly x86 stuff. I've gotten at least a dozen PIV machines and more PIIIs than I care to remember.

In a student org [cmustoc.org] I'm in, we started a computer recycling program to deal with the excess and make sure hardware doesn't end up in a dumpster. We've run into a surprising amount of resistance from the University, but individual professors and some of the smaller departments are sympathetic to our cause.

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[Mr. Roadkill (731328)]

generally find it easier to just put the computers out in the hallways and wait for them to disappear.

Some places you can get away with that, others you can't.

I work at a University in Australia where such things used to happen. Not so much any more...

In between ideas about responsible e-waste disposal, the occupational health and safety (not to mention public liability) issues of leaving items lying on the floor in the hallways and what we're permitted to stick in our waste stream these days, we've

Have you checked ebay?

[damn_registrars (1103043)]

I don't know how Illinois does it, but being in the State University of New York (SUNY) system, I can tell you that our surplus stuff ends up on ebay if it can't find new homes through our property management:

nyssurplus-albany [ebay.com]

FWIW, that office actually handles (at least) state schools, prisons, and mental hospitals. Some interesting stuff gets sold through that group, to say the least...

Why not...

[imyy4u3 (1290108)]

sell them to the Air Force for use in their botnet [slashdot.org]?

Illinois Surplus Auction site.

[flogger (524072)]

Sometime these things may end up here:

https://ibid.illinois.gov/secure/default.aspx [illinois.gov]

Politics.

[jellomizer (103300)]

Normally a lot of the problem is about accounting.
If they are returned vs. given away vs. stolen. all accounts differently in the books for tax purposes. If your university is state owned it is probably an issue that it is easier to trash the computers then give them away because then you will get groups saying they need them more then other groups. No it is not fair or easy but thats the governemnt.

Not going to waste

[sm62704 (957197)]

I live in Springfield (Yes, an alderman here is Gail Simpson [illinoistimes.com] and our state is indeed run by cartoons), where the state's computer systems get "dumped". They are disposed of the same as state-owned automobiles: by auction. Once or twice a year they sell used computers at the fairgrounds by the palletload.

Sounds fishy...

[Taibhsear (1286214)]

I work at a college in illinois (chicago to be exact) and we don't throw out old systems. Every few years when they feel necessary or professors complain they will replace our department computers. The computer support people delist them from use and mark them as storage. Then they sell the systems for dirt cheap to students and faculty (who get them for free). I don't know of any policies in place regulating how many systems employees can take but I'm working on acquiring number two right now. I assure you, at least not at this college, they are not tossed in the garbage. Not only is this wasteful and stupid but it is also against the law IIRC. Computer components are very hazardous to the environment. You can't just throw that stuff out. It has to be recycled or disposed of properly, like any hazmat or chemical material.

A way around it...

[SeaSolder (979866)]

I used to work in the IT department of a Highschool, and we came up with a great way of dealing with this issue.

In it's infinite wisdom, the school district would put the inventory barcode on the computer case, and inventory it as a computer, rather than inventory the components. So when we were done with a computer, and it was ready to be decomissioned, we would strip out the case. Everything that was usable would come out. Power supplies, NIC's, HD's, Mother Boards, etc. These would then be put into storage, and used to maintain and upgrade the rest of the computers. (Filling up RAM slots, adding extra HD's, etc.) This way, we would always have a supply of spare parts on hand in case we needed to replace a faulty component, and repair components wouldn't come out of our budget. (That way we could buy more and better new machines.) The cases would be sent to surplus.

As a side benefit, if anyone's personal machine broke down, there was a huge supply of good parts to use.

Re:

[mr_mischief (456295)]

I doubt they get the dumpster treatment. They might get sold by the uni or by the state's surplus property warehouse in Springfield. They might even be sold by the pallet at auction. About 7 years ago I know it wasn't uncommon for the newest computers to be sold individually and for pallets of PCs and/or monitors to go for $75-$100 at the auctions.

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[sm62704 (957197)]

He's cold, you sensitivein lysdexic!