Advanced Networking and IT Governance

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR Symposium, December 5-7, 2007, in Boca Raton, Florida. Higher education IT organizations have become increasingly aware of the need for governance processes that sit above day-to-day management and address strategic alignment and the political realities of satisfying IT's many constituencies. But how should -and do- higher education institutions govern IT? This presentation uses the results of an ECAR study of IT governance to frame an interactive session on how to mix good structural governance practices with practical politics.

How to Cite This Work: Yanosky, Ronald, and John W. McCredie. "IT Governance: Solid Structures and Practical Politics." Presentation at the ECAR Symposium, Boca Raton, FL, December 5-7, 2007, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

This research bulletin examines the ways many research universities govern their IT activities, explores some inherent problems in these processes, identifies several good practices, and suggests changes that may improve the current state of the art. It draws on research conducted by MIT and ECAR on IT alignment and governance; information submitted to the EDUCAUSE Core Data Service survey; the results of an extensive review of IT governance at the University of California, Berkeley; a one-day governance workshop hosted by the Common Solutions Group; the work of a project team participating in the IT Leaders Project; and the observations and results of several external review committees on which the author has served.

As a complement to ECAR's core study about IT Engagement in Research, this case study examines Princeton University's institutional research computational facility, which is developed and funded collaborative by its Office of Information Technology, university organizations, and individual faculty members. It explores the critical elements involved in creating a collaborative environment for research computation as well as the organizational structures that foster synergy between computational research and information technology infrastructure.