I. Information Technology Leadership.
A change to the organizational status quo should improve our ability to address two problematic issues. First, there is wasted effort and an uneven floor because we have forced each unit to try to be a research and development center with respect to IT. Second, worthwhile IT projects are not successfully competing for University resources.
The primary responsibility of the CIO should be to offer options to the Provost, President, and Board. To understand their expectations and determine the resources required to meet those expectations. To ensure the resources are allocated and that they are distributed to the units who will build IT. This will require that the person in this role must have direct access to the venues where the most basic funding decisions are made. And to *all* the arenas in the institution where IT development and deployment takes place. It also means this person can not be responsible for "managing" the CIT division as that is a full time job already.
Some consolidation of IT service units should occur. To develop IT successfully the developers need to be "close to" the clients, and they need to be "close to" other developers. Larger units offer better cohesion, cross training, advancement opportunities, and they reduce risk. IT units should report to an appropriate level within their domain. IT units will gain enormously by physically co-locating. Informal, frequent, face to face communication is critical.
All public labs should be managed by a single unit. All classroom technology should be managed by a single unit. This will produce more consistent facilities with a higher level of support. It will simplify (and therefore speed up) the process of requesting, planning, and deploying new equipment.
II. How should UVM budget for IT.
Let's divide IT into two categories. There is the "basic level of service" kind of IT, and the specialized need or "ground breaking" kind of IT. The basic level of service, or the floor is currently too low. We should centrally build and deploy the basic service. We will charge units an ongoing fee for service, and subsidize this centrally so it winds up being affordable from the client unit's perspective.
The group responsible for managing labs and the group responsible for managing classroom technology should respond to requests for new facilities and should have sufficient budget to address many requests. For large new initiatives, the requests would be forwarded through the CIO. Projected costs for new initiatives will always include the cost of implementation, training, and ongoing support.
III. Standards.
90% of what people want to do with IT could be deployed in a standard networked desktop computer and printer. We should have a unit responsible for designing, constructing, deploying, and servicing all the faculty and staff desktop computers. We can fund this through a monthly fee per unit which would be centrally subsidized. The fee would cover everything from hardware maintenance to training.
In cases where there is no standard solution that can reasonably meet needs, a specialized solution should be deployed. By making a large portion of what we do routine and standard, we can concentrate on managing the exceptions. We should demand that standards be upgraded regularly. This is painful, but learning to manage technological changes is an important and durable skill, and we could get very good at it.
IV. IT Skills.
We should endeavor to eliminate the need for everyone to learn arcane "IT" skills. Skills that have no long term value. Skills like "what settings should I use on my TCP/IP driver to get maximum throughput for streaming video?".
We should concentrate on teaching durable skills that are designed to help us be more efficient and effective. Skills like publishing what we know in an accessible format. Skills like communicating effectively with each other to build a cohesive institution.
V. Support.
Divide and conquer. Make the standard standard and manage the unique.
Power in numbers (of support staff). Utilize them equally across the enterprise.
One unit manages public labs.
One unit manages classroom technology.
One unit deploys the standard desktop.