Information technology is a set of interrelated functions that are critical to many different aspects of UVM's mission. Strong central leadership, and tight coordination between the primary players is critical to our continued progress. I envision an administrative structure in which a CIO focuses the responsibility and the representation for a broad array of IT functions within the highest levels of the administration. Furthermore, this CIO would work out of the base of an IT Council that is composed of the primary top level administrators of IT-critical areas.
As the IT administration is rearranged to form these positions, it would be also wise to rearrange the subdivisions of IT responsibility.
CIO
The CIO should be the primary visible "point" person for IT within three different spheres: The administration, the extramural environment, and the intramural academic community.
Within the administration, the CIO would represent the budgetary and long-term investment in IT (as well as the return for that investment) to President, Provost, Vice-President(s), and Trustees. Issues relating to IT on campus would be delegated to the CIO rather than handled ad hoc by many different top level administrators. Further, the CIO would participate actively in the budget discussions/decisions for other campus units that seek funding for IT-related activities.
Our IT activities are influenced by, and have an impact on, individuals and organizations outside of the immediate UVM community. The CIO should be active in establishing external partnerships, seeking extramural funding and endowments for IT-related activities, and for promoting our accomplishments.
The CIO should take a strong leadership position with regard to the academic community. This should include drawing together our dispersed IT activities into an active, identifiable intellectual center, with a sense of collaboration, progress, and excitement in order to stimulate creativity in the application of IT to our missions of teaching and research.
Finally, the CIO should act as chair of the IT Council, drawing upon the collective wisdom and strength of the Council members, while helping them to reach strong consensus positions regarding the coordinated function of IT within their areas.
IT Council
The IT Council should be composed of the directors of critical IT functions on campus. The council could be composed, for example, from the Director of Libraries, the Director of Continuing Education, the Director of Administrative IT-Support, and the Director/Dean of Academic IT, as well as the CIO.
Reporting Structures
The above suggestion implies a rearrangement of some administrative functions and positions. The primary difference lies with the subdivision of current CIT functions into Administrative and Academic (as they had been several decades ago). This division makes sense due to the diverging nature of the two missions. The administrative division would have primary responsibility for the central data processing (HRS, FRS, SIS, etc.) and other IT infrastructure like Telecommunication and IT security. The academic division would administer the student and faculty IT resources regarding PC computing and the Depot, student laboratories, e-mail and web accounts, course development support, internet I & II access, and research computational infrastructure. In addition, the academic division would be responsible for IT instruction.
The Divisions of Libraries and Continuing Education both overlap each of these other divisions. Thus a clear working relationship between these two directors and the directors of administrative and academic IT on the Council, coordinated by the CIO would bring together the major, interlocking, partners in campus IT.
Budgeting for IT must be identifiable wherever possible. This would include 1) An overall central budget (consisting of annual and one-time funds) that would cover the activities of Administrative and Academic IT; 2) The IT programs within the Libraries and Continuing Education (not the entire budgets of these latter two organizations); 3) The central contribution for IT-related functions in the distributed colleges and divisions (also only a portion of their total budgets, and not including any special or matching funds redirected for local IT projects).
The total IT budget would be the responsibility of the CIO and the IT council. The budget proposal would be reviewed annually as part of the normal budget hearings. Separate IT funding would not normally be granted to individual units without inclusion in the overall IT budget.
The broad diversity in our IT mission is part of the difficulty with establishing standards that the whole university can adopt. The separation, proposed above, of IT into separate administrative and academic divisionsshould ease this difficulty, since separate approaches toward standards could be applied within these two divisions.
Within administrative IT, standards shall be established that are clear, uniform, and coordinated so that they address the various submissions. Committees and working groups would provide cross-talk between subdivisions to coordinate data structures and access standards. Furthermore, clearly established functional standards for software packages associated with particular jobs, and for the training necessary for employees should be established and enforced. The ongoing evaluation of hardware and software standards should be a function supported within the division in close consultation with the administrative offices requiring support.
Standards for academic computing should be derived and maintained to closely reflect the ongoing usage patterns of this community, since neither faculty nor students can be easily dictated to regarding their usage preferences. Academic IT should provide strong support for the most common applications, and should provide cost-effective means to purchase appropriate software packages. In addition, this division should be very active in pursuing emerging IT solutions from major external companies to provide timely advice and support for those in the academic community who need/desire to move in those directions. Such collaborations will provide an identifiable means for our applications to evolve, rather than falling further and further behind.
The formal IT training functions within UVM should be centralized and coordinated into an IT curriculum. This would start with collating a central list of course, mini-course, and workshop opportunities within the current CIT, Continuing Education, the Libraries, and various academic units. The need for new and/or supplemental courses should be periodically assessed, and prompt action taken to develop and publicize new courses. The overall goal of such training support would be to provide a broad-based and seamless curriculum, supporting courses with and without academic credit that could be used within our institution and marketed extramurally.
Such an IT curriculum could be administered in close collaboration
with the current efforts of Continuing Education.
Like the areas of standards, support infrastructure differs depending on its target. In the case of the central administrative systems the basic hardware support should include all central systems, all the way out to the maintenance of the basic desktop environment, i.e. the telephone model. Further, software and configuration support at the end user should be a strong collaboration between central and local support personnel, with the overall goal of minimizing employee time spent on tasks for which they haven't been trained.
The support infrastructure for the academic community should largely parallel this model, but should place more emphasis on local (within departments or other small units) personnel to provide the first line of hardware and software support. One of the most important aspects of such academic support is that it should always foster individual growth and exploration in both the faculty and student populations, with emphasis on providing on site training as part of the support.
All support structures need to be formulated so that they appear seamless to end users. Support personnel should be aware of the breadth of central and distributed resources, including exploratory projects where applicable. Central databases or other tracking systems should be used to log calls requiring follow-up so that the end user can effectively "one-stop shop".
Finally, the academic IT division should foster technology application and development by fostering and supporting collaborative teams made of interested educators, technologists, and students.