Documents Contributed by ECAR, Financial Management, and IT Funding

This research bulletin presents a framework for the effective, ongoing, sustainable funding of IT infrastructure in universities and colleges. The framework articulates the composition of IT infrastructure and derives a cost model for provision of infrastructure services. The model is intended to be straightforward, enabling ready adoption, while also providing flexibility so that it can be updated on a periodic basis to reflect changing technological demand and supply conditions.

In 2004, MIT and Stanford University began the Total Cost of IT project to measure, or at least estimate, the total cost of IT at those two institutions. This bulletin describes the project costing model, processes, and findings and the ways this model can be replicated on other campuses. It explains how to categorize spending, which questions to ask, how to manage and analyze results, and how to extract a meaningful picture of IT spending.

IT portfolio management at the University of Nebraska is being used to address accountability in the broadest sense: strategic decision-making, project analysis, and performance-based reporting. The practice helps decision makers objectively determine which IT projects or systems should move forward and which ones must wait, when to involve others in the decision-making process, and which resources can help managers reach the best decisions. This research bulletin describes how IT portfolio management is structured and employed at the University of Nebraska.

This is the February 2004 ECAR survey instrument used for ECAR Research Study Information Technology Funding in Higher Education.

This research bulletin explores how institutions optimize their portfolio of information technology investments. Drawing from recent research conducted at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management among 130 CIOs, it explores how institutions decide which IT projects to fund and how they assess the costs and benefits of their investments. Do institutions intervene to improve the performance of IT investments that are not delivering on their promise, or are expensive IT investments allowed to languish without intervention?

This summary is designed to illuminate a host of current financial management practices related to IT in higher education; to describe the state of the practice in this critical area; and to identify funding practices that appear to contribute to the overall effective function of the IT operation. The summary is based on five major research initiatives: a literature review, survey responses from 482 chief information officers and 386 chief business officers in higher education, qualitative telephone interviews, and three in-depth cases studies involving five institutions

This ECAR Roadmap is designed to illuminate a host of current financial management practices related to IT in higher education; to describe the state of the practice in this critical area; and to identify funding practices that appear to contribute to the overall effective function of the IT operation. The study is based on five major research initiatives: a literature review, survey responses from 482 chief information officers and 386 chief business officers in higher education, qualitative telephone interviews, and three in-depth cases studies involving five institutions.

This case study examines how Cornell University took an institutional approach to analyzing and determining how IT services, investments, and costs are shared across units of the university. It addresses questions that include, How can a complex and decentralized university make more effective use of its IT resources? How can the central IT organization influence the behavior of academic units that create, and then jealously guard, their isolated pockets of IT activity? How can an institution measure the full scope of information technology costs and benefits within departments, schools, and administrative units?

This ECAR research study is designed to illuminate a host of current financial management practices related to IT in higher education; to describe the state of the practice in this critical area; and to identify funding practices that appear to contribute to the overall effective function of the IT operation. The study is based on five major research initiatives: a literature review, survey responses from 482 chief information officers and 386 chief business officers in higher education, qualitative telephone interviews, and three in-depth cases studies involving five institutions.

This case study examines how the Texas Tech University System developed Projects and Resources for Information Systems Management (PRISM), an IS portfolio prioritization process for allocating resources to align IT projects with institutional goals.