THE RECENT crash of Ateneo Integrated Student Information System (AISIS) brings back discussion to a longstanding pain point of the Atenean community: how come this has never been resolved yet?
The statement is not exactly true—AISIS has recently upgraded to a “cloud-based system” in 2021, in order to circumvent malfunctions caused by power outages on campus. However, this transition is not enough, as the system was reported to be inaccessible during the First Semester’s early enlistment period.
The effects of a poorly functioning enlistment system are tangible enough to cause more than just minor inconveniences for students—they can delay enrollment and prevent students from enlisting in necessary classes.
Given that AISIS has been around since 2005, many of these issues are not new nor even recently noticed. Even in 2013, the AISIS lag during enlistment was already a reported issue, causing a shutdown of the system and rescheduling of enlistment. By that time, however, AISIS was already an 8-year-old system, and the administration acknowledged the need for its update.
With the age of the system, many have called for an overhaul. While not impossible to achieve, some context is needed to give an idea of when Ateneans may be able to even see a new AISIS that performs better than the existing system.
AISIS was reported to be in the works since 1998, but was only integrated into enlistment by 2002, marking a development period of around 4 years. With the wide scope of features that AISIS implements, it also makes it a large collaboration between different offices in Ateneo. Just recently, Ateneo announced the development of Ateneo 360— planned to also be released in four years.
In recent enlistment periods, freshmen were scheduled to enlist on a separate schedule, while upperclassmen were assigned the same timeslot. Due to competition for slots, most students tend to flood the site as early as possible—a factor for AISIS’ crash. Ateneo Facts and Figures recorded 8,922 enrolled undergraduates and 2,195 enrolled freshmen for AY 2022–2023. Using these numbers as an estimate for the current student population, this would mean that around two to three times the number of freshmen would have been enlisting on AISIS during the upperclassmen schedule.
The Registrar’s Office (RO) has experimented with various schemes to alleviate these issues to varying degrees of “success”—with early enlistment succeeding the previous system of random batches. Even then, concerns of whether AISIS’ servers could accommodate the batch system have been present when the Registrar switched from four batches to two for a “fairer” enlistment.
AISIS attempts to solve a problem that accommodates a large number of people with a wide variety of needs—from students enlisting in classes, faculty releasing grades, to the RO releasing schedules.
While there have been attempts at a satisfactory compromise, there is still far to go. With people now becoming more reliant on technology, an enlistment system that is approaching unusability becomes less acceptable than before.
The new system may bring more promise or dread after twenty years of AISIS. As Digital Information and Technology Services moves to improve the school’s online infrastructure, Ateneo 360 will have to catch up to serving the needs of the Ateneo body in four more years.
Cheska is a Computer Science junior at the Ateneo de Manila University, expecting to graduate in 2027. She looks at the world through an analytical lens, to the best of her ability.
Editor’s Note: The views and opinions expressed by the opinion writer do not necessarily state or reflect those of the publication.
