ITS Strategic Plan 2000-2005

November 15, 1999

 

Mission Statement

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Information Technology Services (ITS) is a professional services unit of the University of Iowa whose mission is to identify, develop, deploy, and support information technologies with a variety of campus partners for the benefit of faculty, staff and students.

Core Values
  1. Customer Focus –We facilitate the use of technology primarily where it is requested, or needed by our customers. This is our single most important value. Working with our partners, we may also anticipate, plan, and promote the use of relevant technologies, even when there is not an obvious, immediate demand. The key is that we will be flexible and know that we are an important part of the campus community.
  2. Efficient and Responsive – We strive to be known for rapid results, delivered in a cost effective, reliable manner. We value continuous learning of relevant skills, and we measure the quality of our work.
  3. Responsible – We are responsible in our efforts to the institution in both these areas:
    1. The University mission, purpose and values.
    2. Each other as employees of ITS with unique and interrelated roles.
  4. Integrity – We value both personal integrity and the integrity of our IT goals, architectures, priorities, customer, and vendor relationships.
 
Environmental Assessment

External Factors

1.      Dramatic hardware technology price/performance improvements will continue at faster rates than we have seen so far. However, the software and support costs are likely to continue to rise, as both demand and complexities increase.

2.      Deregulation and convergence of voice, data, and video in the communications arena will continue.

3.      The value of information technology and its demand in higher education will increase.

4.      Skilled IT staff will continue to be scarce, particularly in higher education.

5.      There has been a shift in skill requirements from purely technical to an emphasis on the need for skills in business processes, change facilitation and project management.

6.      The rapid commercialization and transformation of the Internet will fundamentally alter the way many universities operate, both in its academic and administrative areas.

7.      State of Iowa Department of Information Technology may mandate technology standards and practices that create opportunities and challenges for the Regent’s institutions.

8.      Mutually beneficial partnerships with Iowa State University and University of Northern Iowa will become more important.

9.      The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), vendor forums, and user groups, and other regional or national organizations will continue to influence local decisions.

10.  The UI has a number of international academic and research strengths that represent significant opportunities for ITS service.

11.  The emphasis on interdisciplinary programs represents opportunity for ITS to provide support for shared data and collaboration methods.

Internal Factors (Environmental Assessment - continued)

  1. Rising external research funding will create both opportunities and challenges for ITS.
  2. Institutional support for ITS in a facilitating role for campus departments creates significant opportunities for ITS to succeed and grow.
  3. The University has demonstrated its willingness to make administrative and financial changes necessary for IT needs and opportunities.
  4. ITS staff members are creative and dedicated to the University’s purpose and mission, as well as the Iowa City community.
  5. Distribution of ITS staff in multiple campus locations reduces internal efficiency. However, dispersion across campus may improve our effectiveness and partnering with students, faculty and staff.
  6. Our service delivery, decision cycles, and quality controls need constant attention and continuous improvement to meet the mission of ITS and the needs of the campus.
  7. Our customers expect information technologies to be: deployed fast, reliable, and sustainable.
  8. Our staff need to be: technically grounded, articulate, customer-oriented, willing to take shared risks, and energetic.
  9. We compete for the use of financial resources with other important institutional needs, and we recognize the need to be judicious and accountable in our plans and efforts.
  10. Traditionally, ITS funding has been a mix of fee-based service offerings and institutionally-funded services. However, a common perception is that ITS is an auxiliary, fee-only organization, which does not have the funding necessary to support its mission, other than through charging fees.

Strategic Goals

 The following ITS goals are linked to the University Strategic Plan goals by a reference to one or more of the five University goals. For reference, those goals are:

Goal 1    An undergraduate experience that enables students to fulfill their intellectual, social, and career objectives.

Goal 2    Premier graduate and professional programs in a significant number of areas.

Goal 3    Distinguished research, scholarship, and artistic creation.

Goal 4    Interdisciplinary interaction in teaching, research, and service.

Goal 5    Promote a highly productive organization, which supports the mission and values of the University.

A “Cross Reference of University Goals and ITS Goals” is included at the end of the plan. Items that are significantly new from our current practice are labeled “(NEW)”.  A “Summary of New Initiatives” is also included at the end of the plan, with broad sources of funding identified.

 For readability, these strategies are grouped into the categories of Academic and Research Support, Administrative Support, Infrastructure, and Interdisciplinary Support, and ITS-Internal Goals. The order in which they are listed does not reflect relative priority or importance.

Academic and Research Support
  1. Work with faculty and the Provost's office to develop and implement ways to improve teaching through the use and integration of technology. (Goal 1,2)
  2. Solicit, analyze, and incorporate suggestions from the campus research community for enhancing support of research activities. Refine a campus-wide vision for high-performance computing and other needs as identified. (Goal 2,3,4) (NEW)
  3.  Working with campus partners, support and enhance technology–based facilities, such as ITC's, classrooms, and labs. (Goal 1,2)
  4. Work with faculty, the Center for Teaching, University Libraries, student leadership groups, and other units on campus to develop and implement ways to improve technology literacy among faculty and students. (Goal 1,2,3,4,5)
  5. Facilitate and support collaborative projects between the University of Iowa faculty and other organizations, such as Regents Institutions and the CIC. (Goal 1,2,4)
  6. Remove barriers to interdisciplinary interactions by advancing the availability and utility of communication, collaboration, and cooperative technologies. (Goal 1,2,3,4,5)
  7. Work with the Office of the Provost to develop and implement ways for students to acquire critical job-related technology skills. (Goal 1,2) (NEW)
  8. Support a transition in the University community from the management of information to the management of knowledge, including providing tools that aid in the discovery, retrieval, manipulation, and dissemination of knowledge in various media. (Goal 1,2,3,5)
  9. Work with Human Resources unit, Colleges and departments to improve the availability, competencies, and retention of IT staff in all campus departments. (Goal 5)
  10. Provide support to the traditional and digital libraries. (Goal 1,2,3,4)
  11. Improve the ease and accessibility of acquiring personal computers and other information technology (brokering, online ordering, loans, training, etc.). (Goal 1,2,5)
Administrative Support

1.      Implement administrative applications (i.e., financial systems, human resources systems, registration systems) that are responsive to customer needs, reliable in their operation, and effective for administrative needs. (Goal 1,2,3,4,5)

2.      Devise commonly used administrative applications and tools for use by multiple administrative functions. (Goal 5)

3.      In conjunction with our administrative partners, identify and capture core university processes for use in process architecture creation and process improvement efforts. (Goal 5)

4.      Assist university data stewards in promoting institutional data as a university asset through effective management, secure access, efficient sharing, and robust analysis. (Goal 5)

5.      Enhance administrative decision making processes through the use of web based reporting tools, decision support systems, and data integration technologies. (Goal 5) (NEW)

IT Infrastructure and Interdisciplinary Support
  1. Improve electronic access to information resources from on-campus and off-campus locations through the completion of the communication infrastructure upgrade for administrative, academic and residence services facilities. (Goal 1,2,3,4,5) (NEW)
  2. Provide quality access to information resources from off campus locations for faculty, staff and students. (Goal 1,2,3,4,5) (NEW)
  3. Maintain the services that support electronic access to information resources as a reliable campus utility. (Goal 1,2,3,4,5)
  4. Improve strategic vendor relationships (i.e., Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Apple, Peoplesoft, WebCT, Macromedia). (Goal 3,4,5) (NEW)
  5. Build technical support teams specializing in training, integration, server and desktop management and process improvements. Create other vendor-specific support staff as demand warrants. (Goal 5)
  6. Promote the use of project management skills, mentoring, and models for University projects. (Goal 5)
  7. Plan and provide capacity planning and infrastructure (e.g., software, hardware, people) necessary to support the administrative and academic information technology needs of the campus. (Goal 5)
  8. Support messaging and productivity systems such as e-mail, voicemail, and calendaring. Establish a personal desktop that is accessible anywhere, anytime. (Goal 1,5)
  9. Develop our capabilities to share development, maintenance and support responsibilities with our partners on more projects. (Goal 5)
  10. Promote the use of the Internet and campus Intranet by creating collaborative Intranets, portals, newsgroups, bulletin boards, public event calendars, and chat rooms. (Goal 5)
  11. Sponsor and participate in symposia focused on the uses of enabling technologies (media publishing, interactivity, knowledge management, video conferencing) for collaborative design and research projects. (Goal 5)
  12. Promote document management as a way to better manage information. (Goal 5)
  13. Facilitate collaborative projects among the University of Iowa faculty and externally with Regents Institutions, the CIC, and other organizations. (Goal 4)
  14. Develop information technology standards that promote interoperability and cost effective use. (Goal 3,4,5)
  15. Provide security systems and safeguards that allow the appropriate sharing of information, but limit the inappropriate use of information technology resources. (Goal 3,4,5) (NEW)
  16. Implement a strategy for support services that are convenient, easily accessible, and that empower the user through self-help methods. (Goal 5)
ITS –Internal Goals
  1. Improve our performance by gathering data from customers, measuring our activities, planning, and tracking our work. (Goal 5)
  2. Use project and service management methods and processes to improve our accountability. (Goal 5)
  3. Reinforce the values of high quality and timely responsiveness and measure our ability to improve in both areas. (Goal 5)
  4. Evaluate new methods and technologies that might be deployed for the needs of our customers. (Goal 1,2,3,4,5)
  5. Improve planning and decision-making skills and processes. (Goal 5)
  6. Organize in ways that recognize our support for both specific customer needs and shared infrastructure services. (Goal 5)
  7. Find and replicate existing best practices, using outside expertise, contractors, and similar resources to augment our existing staff. (Goal 5)
  8. Invest in employees by creating and promoting better methods of building on existing skills, adding new skills, and recognition programs that are relevant to the ITS mission and customer needs. (Goal 5)
  9. Develop methods and multi-year plans for initial and ongoing financial support of information technologies. Continue to move toward central and institutional funding methods, rather than primarily fee-for-service funding methods, where that aligns better with the nature of the services. (Goal 5)
  10. Continue to pursue planning and operational strategies to improve the physical work environments of all ITS staff. (Goal 5)

Cross Reference of University Goals and ITS Goals

 

University Strategic Goals

ITS Strategic Goals

 

Academic and Research Support

Administrative Support

IT Infrastructure and Interdisciplinary Support

ITS Internal Goals

Goal 1     An undergraduate experience that enables students to fulfill their intellectual, social, and career objectives.

 

Goals 1,3,4,5,6,7,8,10,11

Goal 1

Goals 1,2,3,8

Goal 4

Goal 2     Premier graduate and professional programs in a significant number of areas.

 

Goals 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,10,11

Goal 1

Goals 1,2,3

Goal 4

Goal 3     Distinguished research, scholarship, and artistic creation.

 

Goals 2,4,6,8,10

Goal 1

Goals 1,2,3,4,14,15

Goal 4

Goal 4                 Interdisciplinary interaction in teaching, research, and service.

 

Goals 2,4,5,6,10

Goal 1

Goals 1,2,3,4,13,14,15

Goal 4

Goal 5     Promote a highly productive organization, which supports the mission and values of the University.

 

Goals 4,6,8,9,11

Goals 1,2,3,4,5

Goals 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,14,15,16

Goals 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

Summary of New Initiatives and Proposed Funding Sources

 

ITS Group and Item Number

New Initiative Description

Funding Type

Approximate

Annual Amount

Approximate Timing

ARS - 2

Solicit and respond to needs from campus research community

Reallocation

$100,000-500,000

FY 01 – FY 03

ARS - 7

Assist students in obtaining job-related skills

Reallocation

$100,000-200,000

FY 01 – FY 02

AS – 5

Enhance administrative processes through web-based tools, methods

Project funding

 

FY 00 – FY 05

INF - 1

Improve campus communication infrastructure for voice, data

Bonded Debt, Service Fees

$1,500,000

FY 00 – FY 01

INF – 2

Improve off-campus connectivity for faculty, staff, students

Bonded Debt, Service Fees

$200,000

FY 00

INF - 4

Improve strategic vendor relationships

Vendors, Reallocation

 

FY 00 – FY 02

INF - 15

Improve Security methods and policies

Reallocation, Project funding

$500,000

FY 01 – FY 02

ITS – 7

Find and replicate best practices, and use contractors to supplement ITS staff

Reallocation, Project funding

$500,000-1,000,000

FY 00 – FY 05

ITS – 8

Invest in ITS employees to improve skills, retention, productivity

Reallocation, Professional Fees

$500,000-750,000

FY 00 – FY 05
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