Overcoming the Barriers to Using IT as Leverage for Improving Institutional Performance

There are two necessary conditions for using technology to improve institutional performance.  The first is the effectiveness of the central IT organization in support of planning, implementing, and managing a high-performance baseline technology infrastructure that has expanded, or is expanding, to support an information infrastructure.  The second necessity is institutional leadership committed to supporting IT and including the IT organization in an institutional transition toward an innovation infrastructure.  This process must permit and require academic and administrative units to work together daily in real time in order to a) identify mission-critical performance obligations and related indicators for measuring improvement objectives, b) assign academic and administrative “owners” to the selected performance objectives, and c) fund and support service process redesign strategies and innovation projects designed to meet the selected objectives.  While most executive and IT leaders understand this to mean that the IT strategic plan must align with the institutional strategic plan, John Voloudakis argues that more is needed—specifically, a blended, adaptive planning model to achieve focus and nimbleness on a continuous initiative-by-initiative basis.[14] 

First, however, the president or chancellor must ensure that the IT organization itself is not a barrier to progress, exhibiting weaknesses such as:

Dysfunctional human resources

• Weak internal management
• Weak service mentality
• Staff recruiting and retention difficulties
• Weak leadership—inability to work collaboratively with academic and administrative units to accomplish tactical goals and to plan for and support the human and organizational aspects of an innovation infrastructure and culture

Inadequate resources for IT and IT projects, whether an issue within the IT organization or an issue of institutional resource allocation

• Inadequate IT infrastructure
• Inadequate support services and coverage (24x7x365)
• Capacity and/or expertise for system planning, selection, conversion, and upgrade for key systems
• Capacity and/or expertise for services/systems integration—web, portal, and other projects in support of creating an analytics infrastructure and an innovation infrastructure and culture

Unpredictable or unsustainable IT costs

No economies of scale from outsourcing or from being part of a system, district, or consortium