Hub and spoke model diagram showing central IT serves as the hub while collegiate and administrative IT teams represent the spokes

OneIT: It's how we work

Over the past decade, the University of Iowa IT community built a strong foundation of collaboration as OneIT. With a hub-and-spoke​ model, central IT serves as the hub while collegiate and administrative IT teams represent the spokes. The OneIT name was chosen to recognize that the IT community is at its best when it works together.

As the hub, the central IT organization, Information Technology Services (ITS), takes responsibility for university-wide IT efforts, policies, and operations​. Distributed units utilize the hub's services and combine them with their unique offerings to address specific needs in their area.​ In total, 557 employees are part of OneIT. 

Leaders from distributed units have a dual reporting relationship to the CIO and are directly involved with strategic planning and IT governance. The OneIT governance process provides enhanced transparency, improved prioritization and risk management, synchronization with university efforts, coordinated technology planning, and broader engagement across OneIT. More than a dozen IT communities bring colleagues together for discussions, advice, and support.  

Delivering core, common, and unique IT services

OneIT has embraced a “core, common, unique” model to better define the roles of the hub and spoke. 

  • Core IT services are used by nearly everyone on campus and are delivered by the hub, ITS. Examples of core services include email, wireless, technical support, and IT infrastructure.
  • Common IT services are used by many people on campus. Examples include classroom and instructional technologies, administrative systems, and large-scale research computing resources. These are typically delivered by ITS, but often with support from local IT units. 
  • Unique IT services are more specialized and used by a smaller number of people. They are often handled by local IT units. Examples include discipline-specific applications or lab equipment. 

Within this framework, IT professionals find common needs and learn how other units have solved problems. They balance local needs with the greater needs of the university and consider how IT solutions fit into the bigger picture. They understand integration of technologies and engage other stakeholders in decisions.  

Unique, common, core model defining the roles of the hub and spoke diagram
OneIT and Health Care integration diagram showing how each organization and their departments and units work together

Working with health care IT

In addition to collaboration within OneIT, working with Health Care Information Systems (HCIS) is essential in providing IT services needed by the university. Like OneIT, HCIS has nearly 500 employees. Although HCIS is not a part of OneIT, effective collaboration is crucial for both entities and the university’s success. Both IT organizations are outstanding and have made tremendous progress teaming up to help the university leverage scale and consistency wherever possible. University leadership continually underscores the significance of their collaboration, advocating for an integrated approach to IT functions. 

OneIT and HCIS have a long history of jointly providing IT services and continue to look for ways to do more together. They leverage common security systems and operations, service desk management systems, finance, human resources, inventory and purchasing systems, email, and external networking. A commitment to joint efforts remains steadfast and given the increased reliance on technology in both organizations, it will be critical to continue to identify and pursue opportunities.  

National and campus engagement

The University of Iowa is heavily engaged in national higher education IT organizations, including the Common Solutions Group, the Big Ten Academic Alliance, and Unizin, among others. Iowa works with colleagues across the country to solve problems, share best practices, develop learning-analytics solutions that foster student success, and facilitate relationships and negotiations with vendors. Engagement in such organizations benefits the institutions greatly and Iowa is proud to be part of them. 

The CIO is highly involved at the campus level, meeting regularly with senior university leaders to determine how IT can support them strategically and operationally. The campus appreciates the value of IT and welcomes the engagement. The CIO is a member of several of the university’s Strategic Plan Action and Resource Committees and OneIT is a key partner in student success initiatives. The OneIT Strategic Plan was developed by IT leaders from across campus in support of the university strategic plan

About Information Technology Services

As the central IT organization, ITS is composed of seven key departments, each with distinct responsibilities and services.

University of Iowa Information Technology Services organizational chart

CIO Office

The CIO Office supports the business and administration aspects of the ITS organization and the CIO in broader university efforts.  

Employees in the CIO Office provide leadership in: 

CIO Office staff support the CIO broadly across all areas of responsibility, engaging in strategic planning, change management, governance, policy development, and involvement in regional and national efforts. A chief of staff acts as a strategic advisor and facilitator, bridging the gap between leadership and the rest of the organization, ensuring clear communication, effective operations, and alignment with strategic goals. A senior director in the CIO Office is dedicated to fostering partnerships and coordinating collaboration across all OneIT units. 

Tim Evans is the executive director of the CIO Office.

Tim Evans

Tim Evans

Title/Position
Executive IT Director

Tim Evans has served the University of Iowa’s Information Technology Services (ITS) since 1999 and is currently executive IT director in the CIO Office, where he leads the human resources, finance and budget, strategic communications, project management, and custom application development and integration teams. He began his Iowa career as business manager for Telecommunications and Network Services, later also managing voice services and leading the campus communication utility project team. Over the past two decades, he has directed ITS finance, budget, and HR teams, and served more than 10 years as senior director of Enterprise Services and three years as senior director of Enterprise Infrastructure. Evans is a member of the ITS Leadership Team, the OneIT Governance Technical Committee and OneIT Executive Committee.

Office of Teaching, Learning, and Technology

The Office of Teaching, Learning, and Technology (OTLT) focuses on: 

  • Delivering service management, support, and training for instructional technologies used campus-wide, such as the course-management system, Iowa Courses Online (ICON), the digital recording tool, UICapture, the feedback and assessment tool, Gradescope, the student-response system, Top Hat, the plagiarism-detection tool, Turnitin, and a learning-analytics system, Elements of Success.
  • Consulting, training, and management of more than 300 technology-equipped learning spaces; designing and supporting audio visual equipment in classrooms, labs, and meeting spaces.
  • Transforming gigabytes of data into actionable insights that support teaching excellence and advance learning sciences research. 

Maggie Jesse is the executive director of OTLT. 

Maggie Jesse

Maggie Jesse

Title/Position
Executive IT Director

Maggie Jesse is executive director of the ITS Office of Teaching, Learning, and Technology at the University of Iowa. In her role, she leads campus-wide instructional technology and teaching support services. Over her 18-year tenure with ITS, she has built up teams of instructional technology professionals who support learning spaces, computer labs and public computing areas across campus, enterprise instructional technologies (learning management system, lecture capture, electronic textbooks, etc., pedagogical uses of technology through training and consultation, and learning science research that leverages more than 1.3 million daily student transactions with UI digital learning platforms. She received her MBA from the University of Iowa.

Information Security and Policy Office

The Information Security and Policy Office (ISPO) focuses on protecting the university’s people, processes, and technology from cybersecurity threats by: 

  • Promoting implementation and use of secure IT systems, services, and programs across the university, including the hospital.
  • Providing educational materials for technology providers and security awareness programs for users.
  • Consulting on regulatory compliance issues.
  • Developing and sharing industry best practices for security.
  • Leading critical information security services.
  • Coordinating security incident response and resolution.
  • Facilitating development of IT policies for campus.  

Zach Furst is the chief information security officer. 

Zach Furst

Zach Furst

Title/Position
Chief Information Security Officer

Research Services

Research Services (RS) empowers researchers through: 

  • Computing Services: high-performance computing (Argon), and the Interactive Data Analytics Service.
  • Workshops such as introduction to HPC, Linux, R, and Python to help researchers discover and effectively use these services.
  • Storage Services: large-scale storage, a research data storage service, research data collaboration service (Globus), and the Iowa Health Data Resource data enclave.
  • Consultations with the research compliance office. 

Lance Bolton is the interim senior director of RS.

Lance Bolton

Lance Bolton

Title/Position
Senior IT Director

Lance Bolton has served in IT roles at the University of Iowa for more than 20 years, following early career positions in private industry with telecom and K–12 high-stakes assessment programs at Pearson. He initially worked in the central ITS organization for about 10 years, managing a variety of core services such as email, enterprise file and print, and web and application development. Bolton then transitioned to distributed IT leadership in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, where he served another 10 years. During this time, he sat on several campus-level IT governance groups and was selected by the CIO to join the Program Office, which guided IT efforts for the Transparent, Inclusive Efficiency Review (TIER) initiative. Two years ago, Bolton rejoined ITS in the Office of the CIO in a newly created position of senior director of partnerships and collaboration, designed to bridge and facilitate communication between central and distributed IT. For the past 12 months, he has served as interim leader for ITS Research Services, a group that provides high-performance computing, large-scale storage, research computing workshops, and IT research compliance support.

Enterprise Services

Enterprise Services (ES) serves as the touchpoint for most students, faculty, and staff who interact with IT. ES partners with University of Iowa Health Care on many services. 

ES is responsible for: 

Tracy Scott is the executive director of ES. 

Tracy Scott

Tracy Scott

Title/Position
Executive IT Director

Tracy Scott has served the University of Iowa's Information Technology Services (ITS) since 1998 and is currently executive IT director of Enterprise Services, where he leads the IT support operations, Enterprise Client Management, Unified Communications, Messaging and Collaboration, IT service management, software licensing, knowledge management, training and AI productivity solutions. He started his career as a student while attending the University of Iowa.  He has led many projects over the years including transitioning services to the cloud, migrating from PBX to VoIP telephony platforms, centralizing desktop support, and collaborating with Iowa Health Care on several initiatives. Scott is a member of the ITS Leadership Team and the OneIT Governance Executive Committee. He holds a bachelor's degree in management information systems and an executive MBA, both from the University of Iowa.

Enterprise Infrastructure

Enterprise Infrastructure (EI) is responsible for: 

  • Physical infrastructure: fiber optic and network cabling, security cameras, communication infrastructure.
  • Internet connectivity for campus and health care.
  • Designing, operating, and maintaining campus data and wireless networks.
  • Overseeing multiple campus datacenters, including the flagship OneIT/health care shared datacenter.
  • Hosting services for central storage, servers, cloud, and databases.
  • System administration services for hosted systems and applications.
  • Ownership and operation of the ITS disaster-recovery program, in partnership with the security office. 

Dave Kelly is the executive director of EI. 

Dave Kelly

Dave Kelly

Title/Position
Executive IT Director

An Iowa native and lifelong resident, Enterprise Infrastructure Executive Director Dave Kelly has had ties to education and the University of Iowa for more than 30 years. A 1995 graduate with a B.S. in computer science, Kelly began his career in the private sector aligned with education and technology before joining the University as a full-time staff member in 2007. In his time in OneIT, Kelly has held multiple roles ranging from technical implementation to executive leadership. In his current role as executive director, Kelly leads a department of five ITS teams providing physical IT infrastructure, network layer services, datacenter management and stewardship, technology platform implementation, and systems administration services. Outside of work, he enjoys golf, jam band music, and Hawkeye victories!

Administrative Information Systems

Administrative Information Systems (AIS) is responsible for: 

Ed Hill is the executive director of AIS. 

Ed Hill

Ed Hill

Title/Position
Executive IT Director, Information Technology Services

Ed Hill is the executive director of Administrative Information Systems (AIS). He began his Iowa career as a student employee, building computer-aided instruction tools. Over his 25-year career with AIS, he has helped guide the department’s transition from mainframe to web-based applications. He was part of the team that developed what is now MyUI, bringing course registration online in the early days of the web, and he held various leadership roles in the development of the student information system (MAUI). As leader of the AIS Architecture Team, he oversaw the creation of enterprise applications for workflow, communications, and data. Since 2023, he has served as executive director of AIS, which supports enterprise applications for students, staff, faculty, and researchers, as well as identity and access management and data analytics services.