EDUCAUSE | Advanced Networking and IT Governance

IT Governance: Solid Structures and Practical Politics

ckeller — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:31:10 -0600

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.

Now Available: Latest Core Data Report on Campus IT Environments

ecoghlan — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:50:40 -0500

The EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2006 Summary Report has just been released. This report summarizes data for the past fiscal year collected from more than 950 colleges and universities about their campus IT environments, practices, and policies. Respondents represent all enrollment sizes, Carnegie classes, and types of governance, as well as international institutions, providing a broad and deep view of the current IT environment in higher education. The full report can be viewed online free of charge.

Among the notable findings from the report are the following.

The percentage of top-level IT leaders at all reporting institutions who sit on the president’s cabinet increased nearly 2% over last year, to about 48%, but once again a higher percentage of community colleges reported this to be the case (about 63%, up from 59%).
Looking at the total number of centralized FTE IT staff this year compared to last year, there was a significant mean increase of 1.85 FTE staff for all responding institutions.
There was a significant leap in deployment of wireless security technologies since last year at all types of institutions, with an approximately 7% increase in deployment overall and about a 34% increase over the last two years.
There was an increase among all respondents in offering many kinds of support to faculty in the use of IT in teaching and learning, with “faculty training on request” the most employed support mechanism, reported by more than 94% of respondents.

Improving IT Governance in Higher Education

drupal — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:23:30 -0500

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.

Supporting Research Computing Through Collaboration at Princeton University

drupal — Tue, 23 May 2006 13:44:16 -0500

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.