Improving IT Governance in Higher Education

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Improving IT Governance in Higher Education

• Jack McCredie
• UC Berkeley, Emeritus ECAR

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EDUCAUSE 2006 Current IT IssuesSurvey (overall
results)

• Security identity management (5)
• Funding (1)
• Administrative/ERP/ systems (2)
• Disaster recovery/Business continuity
• Faculty development, support, training
• Infrastructure management
• Strategic planning (3)
• Governance, organization leadership (4)
• E-learning/distributed teaching learning
• Web systems services

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EDUCAUSE Critical IT Issues Surveys20002005
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Jacks Top IT Opportunities, Issues Challenges
- 2006

• Security privacy
• Re-invent central IT organizations
• Transform teaching learning environments
• Governance Structure

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Defining Governance

• The structure and process of authoritative
  decision making across issues that are
  significant for external as well as internal
  stakeholders within a university.
• ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report, Governance in
  the Twenty-First-Century University, Vol. 30, No.
  1, 2003

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Defining Governance (cont)

• Who makes which decisions, who provides inputs
  and analyzes the issues, who implements the
  results of the decisions, and who settles
  disputes when there is no clear consensus.
• Producing timely decisions, responsible actions,
  and reasonable results.

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Focus on Research Intensive Universities EDUCAUSE
Core Data Survey 2005 (121)

• 49 (m429 total)
• 76
• 59 Pres/provost
• 54 Yes
• 74 Yes
• 76 Yes
• 26 Yes
• 54 Yes

• Central IT staff as of total campus
• Title of VP or CIO
• Where IT reports
• Sits on cabinet
• Campus plan IT
• Stand alone IT plan
• Input from trustees
• Input from cabinet

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Baccalaureate Degree Granting EDUCAUSE Core Data
Survey 2005 (176)

• 88 (m22 total)
• 38
• 64 Pres/provost
• 41 Yes
• 80 Yes
• 57 Yes
• 27 Yes
• 65 Yes

• Central IT staff as of total campus
• Title of VP or CIO
• Where IT reports
• Sits on cabinet
• Campus plan IT
• Stand alone IT plan
• Input from trustees
• Input from cabinet

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Question

• How do most colleges and universities govern the
  large and rapidly evolving set of information
  technology (IT) activities and initiatives that
  take place on their campuses?

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Characteristics of IT Structures in Many Research
Universities

• Independent research projects
• Departmental computing organizations
• Colleges and professional schools
• Campuswide organizations
• Systemwide coordination
• National and regional networking organizations
• Complex committee structures
• Distributed budgetary process

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Questions for you

• If IT governance is an issue on your campus, what
  are some of the most prevalent symptoms of this
  problem?

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Questions for you

• What percentage of your campus community
  understands the IT governance structure on your
  campus?
• Do the campus leaders understand it?

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Symptoms of Governance Problems

• Lack of understanding of how governance works
• Significant gaps and overlaps
• IT security breakdowns
• Low measures of IT effectiveness
• Ineffective involvement of faculty
• Decisions take forever
• Lack of alignment

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Fall 2004 Academic Senate Committee on Computing
- View of IT Decision Making at UC Berkeley
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(No Transcript)
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Some Illustrative Measures from theCommon
Solutions Group (25 R1s)

• IT governance process well understood
• Faculty members are actively involved
• IT governance process is effective
• Department IT priorities are aligned with
  institutional priorities

• 3.5 (out of 7)
• 4.5
• 4.4
• 4.6

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Weill Ross Governance Model

• Key Issues for each IT Decision Area
• IT Principles
• IT Architecture
• IT Infrastructure Strategies
• Customer Application Needs
• IT Investment and Prioritization
• Source MIT Sloan Management Review Winter 2005

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Weill Ross Governance Model

• Six IT Governance Archetypes
• Business Monarchy
• IT Monarchy
• Federal System
• IT Duopoly
• Feudal System
• Anarchy
• Source MIT Sloan Management Review Winter 2005

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Question

• Could your college or university save
  significant money if leaders could enforce
  important IT standards throughout the campus?

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Question

• Could you improve services by coordinating IT
  personnel throughout the campus? What about the
  quality of your IT personnel?

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Case Study University of California, Berkeley

• Strategic planning process
• Focus today on governance
• http//technology.berkeley.edu

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UC Berkeley Background circa 2003
We do not have enough budget to do the job
correctly, but somehow we scrounge the resources
to do it multiple times in half-baked
ways. Anonymous Berkeley observer - 2003
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IT guiding principles for UC Berkeley

• Competing information technology needs must be
  carefully evaluated and information technology
  decision makers must balance
• Innovation vs. Stability/reliability
  Standardization vs. Autonomy/experimentation
  Accessibility vs. Security/privacy Consensus
  vs. Efficiency in decision making Centralized
  services vs. Distributed services
  Proprietary vs. Open source

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Guiding Principles (cont)

• Support for teaching and research
• Integration and inclusion
• Security and reliability
• Ubiquity
• Ease of use
• Alignment
• Information technology excellence

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Six Critical Campuswide IT Issues
IT support of these 3 areas

• We worked with each area to
• answer these questions
• What are the trends in this area?
• What are the implications of each trend for UC
  Berkeley?
• What are the specific implications for IT?
• And to
• Develop specific goals IT plan

1. Teaching learning
2. Research
3. Student experience
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Six Critical Campuswide IT Issues
IT support of these areas
1. Teaching learning
2. Research
3. Student experience
Structure Relationships among the
parts Governance Decision-making
process Funding The flow of, and path to, money
and across-the-board improvements in
4. Security, reliability, access, privacy
5. IT structure, governance, funding
6. Optimization of IT expertise
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IT Structure, Governance, and Funding

• Step 1 Self Study
• Step 2 IT External/Internal Review Committee
• Step 3 Recommendations

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Step 1 Self Study five key findings

• The IT investment process is disconnected from
  the campus funding and budgeting process.
• A "silo-specific" and incremental budgeting
  approach is applied to central administrative
  systems.
• The CIO does not manage (or necessarily know
  about) two-thirds or more of the IT activity on
  campus.

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Step 1 Five key findings (cont)

1. Central administrative roles are unclear with
   respect to instructional computing, research
   computing, and campus IT services.
2. There is no mechanism to encourage IT managers to
   migrate toward "best practices" or to provide
   basic levels of service.

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Step 2 Best practices Structure(As identified
by review committee)

• Achieve better partnership and coordination
  between central and localIT units
• Clarify and enable the position of Chief
  Information Officer (CIO)

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Step 2 Best practicesGovernance(As identified
by review committee)

• Clarify IT decision making roles and
  responsibilities of campus leaders
• Distinguish central issues fromlocal issues
• Simplify committee structure and give clear and
  needed roles

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Step 2 Best practicesFunding(As identified by
review committee)

• Connect analysis and decisions to the budgeting
  process
• Rationalize funding and enabling of both
  instructional and research computing

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Question

• Should the campus CIO also manage the central IT
  operations unit? What conflicts are inherent in
  such a structure?

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Step 3 Final Recommendations

1. The CIO function needs to be strengthened,
   defined more clearly and differentiated from the
   function of running IST.
2. The CIO should be involved in formulating all
   campus-level IT budget requests.
3. Etc., etc.

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Question

• Why do IT governance practices in higher
  education differ so much from best practices in
  successful corporations?