Analysis

Campus Governance
The direction is set at the top. That direction dictates how well a campus performs and influences the way the campus carries out its mission - which is to provide a learning environment and all attendant needs. The CIO, as the provider of all digital and network aspects, must make certain that information technology is aligned with the budget, direction and policy. To achieve optimal results the CIO and her or his team make choices to carry out the mission.

Governance and Technology
The CIO must make decisions to support the institution’s direction, leading to more decisions on the part of the staff. In the past (and in the present) this has meant the build or procurement of what fits the bill. Requests for Proposal (RFP) are issued, a selection process occurs, a path is chosen and obtaining approval closes the loop. That doesn’t change. What can change is how the requirement is met and how the governance and technology bodies interact.

Evolution – The Time Boundary
Adoption of an open enterprise model cannot be approved without a convincing argument that the model can sustain itself over time. Will the companies involved be able to make enough revenue to stay in the game? Will the software staff be available at the needed level? What are the risks? Are there any guarantees?

As it stands there is good evidence that the institutions have supported the continued advancement of existing open projects. While most of this support is on the technical level it is driven by requirements that fill institutional needs. So, there is a bridge between governance, management and the technology. At present much of the mechanism is ad hoc. The future is moving toward building requirement management into the system, allowing a way to assemble how the requirement will be met by showing what components will be used and which new components will need to be built. Over time, the number of new components will get smaller. And they will get simpler.

But while there have been successes we’ve not seen a move toward organising and agreeing on the goal, much less agreeing on how to evolve toward that goal. One outcome this paper promotes is a working group to pull together the new approach we argue for.