ITS Key Strategies for FY08
The Campus IT Strategic Plan, published in July 2007, is the first campus-wide plan to guide IT direction at the UI.
This plan was created with input from the IT Community following a thorough campus IT review and many hours of planning, debate and revision. In addition to a vision statement and a list of guiding principles, the strategic plan contains five goals and 25 strategies that describe the key IT improvements the UI must make in order to achieve its vision.
The ITS Strategic Action Plan lists specific actions that will help us make progress toward the goals and strategies outlined in the strategic plan.
The strategic plan and the ITS action plan are detailed road maps. The CIO and the ITS Directors discussed and analyzed these documents to determine which strategies and actions ITS will focus on in the coming year. These FY08 ITS Key Strategies are of the highest priority. However, as in years past, we will continue to provide services and initiate projects in many areas not listed below.
Goal 1. Support student success through IT systems and services.
- Strategy 1: Promote students' and instructors' use of information technology to support student academic achievement.
- Strategy 2: Provide methods and data for tracking student progress via integrated IT systems.
Goal 2. Support the evolving research needs of the campus.
- Strategy 1: Cultivate an e-research community.
- Strategy 2: Enhance existing basic IT services to better meet the needs of researchers.
Goal 3. Secure our electronic information and IT systems.
- Strategy 2: Appropriately manage all IT systems according to applicable policies and best practices.
- Strategy 3: Locate, protect and track the use of sensitive information on campus systems.
- Strategy 4: Increase awareness of each individual's role in IT security and privacy.
Goal 4. Increase the utilization and effectiveness of IT.
- Strategy 1: Improve user knowledge, skills and abilities regarding available technologies, services and tools.
- Strategy 2: Improve efficient and effective access to electronic information.
- Strategy 3: Expand and improve end-user support.
Goal 5. Provide IT services that meet the campus needs in a coordinated and efficient manner.
- Strategy 3: Build a new campus data center and data management infrastructure as part of an overall strategy to centrally provide a core IT infrastructure that efficiently enables locally delivered services.
- Strategy 4: Implement effective planning and governance for IT at organizational levels, and joint annual planning cycles for all IT groups on campus.
Goal 1. Support student success through IT systems and services.
Strategy 1: Promote students' and instructors' use of information technology to support student academic achievement.
Executive Sponsors: Molly Langstaff and Mike Noel
Primary Contacts: CTS Instructional Services; AIS Project MAUI
Effectively applying technology can create positive change in processes and productivity. In an academic setting we measure productivity through the academic achievement of students. Unfortunately, it's very difficult for faculty and students to use technology to its full benefit when changes are rapid, options are overwhelming and interfaces are difficult to use. Creating support structures, training opportunities and ongoing user communities for sharing best practices will be necessary to fully achieve this goal. These activities must be supported by systems that ease the administrative burdens of our academic workflow process, while enhancing and supporting the ability of students and faculty to engage in collaboration.
Strategy 2: Provide methods and data for tracking student progress via integrated IT systems.
Executive Sponsors: Mike Noel and Molly Langstaff
Primary Contacts: AIS Project MAUI; CTS Instructional Services
Learning outcomes assessment is a critical ongoing process aimed at understanding, measuring and improving student success. It is important that we first identify indicators and predictors of student success and then build solutions to track student success (e.g., portfolios and dedicated databases).
Goal 2. Support the evolving research needs of the campus.
Strategy 1: Cultivate an e-research community.
Executive Sponsor: Molly Langstaff
Primary Contact: CTS Research Services
Campus researchers have consistently commented on how much they value hearing what others are doing on campus, and they've stated that creating opportunities and resources around the simple idea of communicating what other researchers are doing with IT would be of benefit. While this type of informal community-building can have a significant impact, there also is a need to build a formalized community around IT support for research. Currently, IT issues are addressed by the CIO Office and research issues are addressed by the Office of the VPR. This means there is no definitive authority for resolving conflicts or reviewing new ideas. Establishing a governance structure is key to building the e-research community.
Strategy 2: Enhance existing basic IT services to better meet the needs of researchers.
Executive Sponsor: Molly Langstaff
Primary Contact: CTS Research Services
Significant resources are used to support the IT services available on campus. Often, these services weren't developed with researchers' needs in mind, or they're ignored by researchers. By increasing awareness within the research community of existing IT services, we can enable researchers to be more efficient and effective in their use of IT. By increasing awareness in the IT service community, we will reveal opportunities to make (often minor) changes to existing services to better meet the needs of researchers.
Goal 3. Secure our electronic information and IT systems.
Strategy 2: Appropriately manage all IT systems according to applicable policies and best practices.
Executive Sponsor: Steve Fleagle
Primary Contact: IT Security Office
Improving our ability to manage IT facilities, systems and information will involve a number of activities. Some activities will focus on physical access controls and systems, and on the policies needed to ensure appropriate security and to ensure that facilities can be reviewed and assessed in a consistent and appropriate manner. Other activities will focus more on developing and implementing controls at the communication network layer, such as device connection policies for various types of computers. Finally, activities are under way to expand the scope of available services provided for the automatic management of updates to computers.
Strategy 3: Locate, protect and track the use of sensitive information on campus systems.
Executive Sponsor: Steve Fleagle
Primary Contact: IT Security Office
The first line of defense for protecting data is identification. This strategy involves promoting the use of tools and procedures to identify where systems and applications are located, so that we can more effectively monitor and assess them. Many guidelines already exist for the appropriate protection of information and systems, but we need to expand and improve our ability to ensure those protections are in place. We need to help users and administrators by educating them about the University's expectations (policies) for protection of our assets, and by providing resources to assist with the protection.
Strategy 4: Increase awareness of each individual's role in IT security and privacy.
Executive Sponsor: Steve Fleagle
Primary Contact: IT Security Office
This strategy involves a comprehensive plan for increasing awareness of security risks and educating the community about how each of us plays a role in protecting privacy and security of systems and information. This is necessary, as today we all are users of technology and consumers of information. A program is being finalized and promoted that features various education methods, including staff orientation materials, road-show type presentations for faculty and staff meetings, a poster campaign, e-mail messages and an online tutorial.
Goal 4. Increase the utilization and effectiveness of IT.
Strategy 1: Improve user knowledge, skills and abilities regarding available technologies, services and tools.
Executive Sponsors: Steve Fleagle and Molly Langstaff
Primary Contacts: ITS Service Catalog Team; ITS Webmaster; CIO HR; ITS Training Group
Technology is an integral part of the tools and processes we use to accomplish our work. However, the nature of the experience varies dramatically among faculty, staff, and students and depends greatly on the level of training and support individuals receive. Many struggle to use even the basic technology needed to accomplish their work. Others have ideas about how technology can help them be more efficient and effective, but lack the knowledge or support to implement their ideas. Many are unsure what IT services, training and support are available on campus or how to go about finding them. This strategy will address these issues by implementing education programs to help users understand what technologies and services are available to them and how to access those services. It also will establish IT literacy standards for faculty, staff, and students and develop additional IT training opportunities for faculty, staff, and students.
Strategy 2: Improve efficient and effective access to electronic information.
Executive Sponsors: Mike Noel, Rex Pruess and Mark Katsouros
Primary Contacts: AIS; SPA Directory & Authentication; TNS
Institutional data is at the core of University business processes and is integral to decision making. Institutional data typically originates in transactional systems where access is limited. Enterprise systems must be analyzed to determine institutional data accessibility. Based upon that assessment, standard access methods (web services or frameworks) must be created so that developers can utilize institutional data in their applications. Finally, enhanced access methods need to be created that allow for advanced reporting, business intelligence and data analytics.
Strategy 3: Expand and improve end-user support.
Executive Sponsor: Molly Langstaff
Primary Contact: CTS Help Desk
The various IT service providers and service delivery models on campus are confusing to users and often hamper effective delivery of those services. Desk-side IT support is inconsistent and is an ongoing problem for many users. This strategy will address these issues by developing a mechanism to allow users to identify their primary provider of IT support; develop and encourage adoption of best practices across all IT providers on communicating available services to users; develop and foster an IT support community; and explore new and expand existing campus support programs.
Goal 5. Provide IT services that meet the campus needs in a coordinated and efficient manner.
Strategy 3: Build a new campus data center and data management infrastructure as part of an overall strategy to centrally provide a core IT infrastructure that efficiently enables locally delivered services.
Executive Sponsors: Steve Fleagle and Rex Pruess
Primary Contacts: CIO Office; SPA
Adequate data center facilities are a key component in delivering reliable IT services to the campus. Current facilities are not adequate. This strategy calls for assessing our data center needs and then designing and building a data center that best meets those needs. We'll also assess the ever-growing data storage requirements of the campus and then provide storage and data management services to meet those needs. Both of these actions are intended to provide IT infrastructure that allows local IT providers to better deliver their services, whether those services are enterprise or local in nature.
Strategy 4: Implement effective planning and governance for IT at organizational levels, and joint annual planning cycles for all IT groups on campus.
Executive Sponsor: Steve Fleagle
Primary Contact: CIO Office
The highly distributed nature of the University of Iowa has many advantages but also presents some challenges. In order to effectively deliver IT services, planning and service delivery must be coordinated across IT providers. Actions related to this strategy will enhance the existing IT governance structure and provide the framework for an annual joint planning process for IT providers on campus. Coordination of the planning process will allow providers to identify and solve common problems. It also will limit "reinventing the wheel" by different groups on campus. Enhancing the IT governance structure will allow for more consistent representation of the many constituencies on campus and improve the coordination of input from existing IT advisory groups.