"We didn't provide [students] with typewriters," Seltzer says. "We try to treat students as adults and should let them decide the implications of a computer for themselves."

Administrators say their response is based on pragmatics. Already, 92 percent of students have computers, according to a survey conducted by HASCS last semester.

Student computer users say they would like to see administrators take better advantage of the network and place more information on it.

"Harvard's upper level bureaucracy should try to provide more foundational services," says Daniel A. Lopez '97, the president of the Harvard Computer Society. "One of the things that Harvard can do in a decentralized environment is provide foundational services like the data network--which Harvard put into place but didn't dictate how to use."

The committee report acknowledges that the University has been slow in providing some resources via the Internet.

"While progress is being made in many areas, in others it is regrettably slow," the report says.

Lopez says in particular Harvard should create an authentication system so that the University can provide more sensitive information over the Web. An authentication system verifies that people using a program are who they say they are.

Lopez says that with authentication the College could provide student transcripts and telephone bills via the Web.

But the decentralization in the FAS has made joint efforts for such projects difficult to coordinate and implement.

One of the major present concerns for the IT Committee's subcommittee on student life is putting students' grades on-line, according to Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68.

But coordinating such a project would be complicated given Harvard's bureaucratic structure.

Faculty and administrators would have to spearhead the project, HASCS would have to create authentication and the Registrar's Office would have to coordinate the information, according to various administrators.

"Some of the simplest conceptual things turn out to be embedded in process," says Administrative Dean of the Faculty Nancy L. Maull. "There's nothing more to say; it's process."

Training and Coordination

The decentralized nature of information technology also makes training and coordination difficult.