Are We Achieving Anything?

Recently EDUCAUSE released results of their annual “Top Ten IT Issues.” Looking at the 2007 results, it’s interesting to reflect back on the top ten issues from the first survey in 2000. Can you guess which of the following lists is from 2000 and which is from 2007…?

List “A”
1. Funding IT
2. Security
3. Administrative/ERP/Information Systems
4. Identity/Access Management
5. Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity
6. Faculty Development, Support, and Training
7. Infrastructure
8. Strategic Planning
9. Course/Learning Management Systems
10. Governance, Organization, and Leadership for IT

List “B”
1. IT Funding
2. Faculty Development, Support, and Training
3. Distance Education
4. E-Learning Environments
5. Enterprise Administrative Systems
6. IT Staffing and Human Resources
7. IT Strategic Planning
8. Online Student Services
9. Advanced Networking Challenges
10. Support Services Demands

Are any of these issues (on either list) also some of yours?

The number one issue, IT Funding, is still the leading issue seven years later. In fact, it seems that many of the issues that were present in 2000–although labeled differently or actually a subset of issues defined in 2007–persist. What is even more interesting is to look at the advise EDUCAUSE provided in 2000 and that offered most recently, it looks remarkably similar, just like the lists.

What have we been doing for seven years?

By the way list “A” is from 2007.

Sorry Mr. Mossberg: A Little Push-back,

A few posts back I provided an example highlighting Walter Mossberg’s, assertion that IT Departments can be The Most Poisonous Force in Technology, not only a barrier to end-users’, but a barrier to the organizations they are charged to support. In my example, I mentioned several key requirements defined by, not technologists, but those end-users who actually provided the “business service” of teaching on-line; faculty, instructional designers and academic coordinators.

In that example, a new architecture for a learning management system was recommended based on the unique business processes within the university system and on each campus (module/simple sequencing, Learning Design, centralized hosting and support, cross-campus enrollment, common course catalog, off-line development). The final technical design was based on the end-users’ needs (as described through current business processes), exemplifying Mossberg’s ideal; what could be called user-driven design.

However, just as IT departments have a responsibility to user-driven design, where individuals can explore and implement the technology products best suited to their own needs, end-users (and their organizations) also have responsibilities. One particular responsibility, often ignored or deferred (often, ironically, to the IT Department) is requirements gathering.

The Impact of Open Source Software (OSS) on Education

Back in March, Ken Udas, Executive Director of Penn State’s World Campus, began a series entitled The Impact of Open Source Software (OSS) on Education on the Penn State World Campus’ blog, Terra Incognita. The topics of the series while focusing on OSS on Education have evolved to include open educational resources (OER), open courseware (OCW) and governance.

Ken has assembled quite a who’s who of thinkers and practitioners from both the open source software and education communities from around the world. I strongly recommend it.

The Most Poisonous Force in Technology

Earlier this month an email sent out to the Educause CIO Listserv sparked a brief, but heated, discussion among academic CIO’s from across the country. The post that started it all stated:

Walter S. Mossberg, personal-technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, spoke Monday to more than 250 college presidents and other administrators attending the Chronicle Presidents Forum. “…he began his speech by calling the information-technology departments of large organizations, including colleges, ‘the most regressive and poisonous force in technology today.’” They make decisions based on keeping technology centralized,” he said. “Although lesser-known software may be better,” he said, “technology departments are likely to use big-name products for their own convenience. That may keep costs down for an organization,” he said. “but it puts consistency above customization, preventing individuals from exploring what technology products are best suited to their own needs.”

Obviously no one liked the comments (including me), and we all (I would assume) liked even less the presumption of responsibility for running such “regressive and poisonous” departments. But after the sting from the slap to my face subsided, I reflected, just how far off was he, if at all? After some thought, I realized, a few months ago, before stepping into the role of a CIO, I might have been Mr. Mossberg’s strongest supporter…

Barriers to SOA: Connecting to Legacy Files

Any Suggestions?

Ah, the Good ‘ol Days

I had the opportunity for a free therapy session. Christina Smart of JISC’s e-Learning Focus was kind enough to ask about my experiences at SUNY Learning Environments, and my efforts toward implementing a Service Oriented Architecture.

The interview, Developing an SOA at SUNY; Lessons learned, was quite cathartic for me.

I Have a Suggestion, “No more Suggestions!”

It seems like when organizations begin to explore “community” one of the first suggestions is to create a suggestion box. The idea is that end-users and stakeholders can contribute directly to the decision-making of the IT department by suggesting some of the hot topics they would like to see addressed. From these requests, the IT staff will not only learn of the important issues facing users, but also be able to use the information to help prioritize their project list. In theory it sounds great. This transparent process, it is hoped, will engage users, identify future projects and even define priorities.

While the overarching strategic goal—involving the community—should be the basis for IT decision-making and development, suggestion boxes and similar tactics (surveying, committees, etc.) that provide unqualified directions will, in the end, prove detrimental to the department’s operations and reputation.

“I Spy for the CIO”

I recently came across two interesting articles that got me thinking about the validity of my own work with Agile Project Management (APM).

“Open-Source Spying,” by Clive Thompson, published in the December 3, 2006 of the New York Times Magazine.

“The Political Brain: A recent brain-imaging study shows that our political predilections are a product of unconscious confirmation bias,” by Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine and contributer to Scientific American.

APM’s two tenets are collaboration (community development) and evidence-based (just-in-time) decision-making. For any meaningful collaboration to occur, and to reap the benefits from peer review, all stakeholders must be aware of any and all activity underway regarding the project. Eric S. Raymond, declared “Linus’ Law” as “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” or more formally, “Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.” While this has traditionally been applied in software development, I see the same principle extremely valuable to project management in general: Aren’t your faculty, staff and students beta-testers and your facilities, finance and student life departments, co-developers? Sharing everyones issues (bugs) will not only expose them to more brains, brains that might help resolve those issues, but also help to assess their priority (insignificant to show-stopper).

Is it in IT?

There seems to be a lot of talk about who “owns” various, previously considered IT, services and systems.

I recently attended the SUNY Teaching and Learning with Technology Conference and there was an interesting discussion specifically regarding the place of on-line and distance education within the campus’ organizational structure, particularly one like SUNY with 64 distinctive campuses. (This discussion was really lead by the SUNY DOODLE group)

This same discussion, again specific to on-line education, also took place at another recent SUNY event, the SUNY Council of CIO’s. There I noted that while many campus CIO’s have direct reports responsible for their institution’s on-line/distance learning programs (like I do), many other campuses house their programs under Chief Academic Officers/Provosts, Continuing Education, Business and Finance, etc.

With today’s diverse technology landscape many campuses are struggling with how to organize technology services and systems within the institution. While Information Technology departments have traditionally been responsible for development and support of everything from the projectors in smart classrooms to the the applications they project, other campus service providers (Facilities, Registrar, etc.), and in the case of teaching and learning even faculty, are striving to make more services/systems available to achieve their own specific missions. The result is often tension between the technical staff who must maintain a service or system and the end users who rely on its functionality.

Documentation is like sex…

…when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
- Dick Brandon

I believe the best way to measure the health of an organization—particularly one devoted to technology—is by how fast someone new can come up to speed with the who, how and why of institutional operations. It’s probably safe to say that, despite the efforts of both parties in the interview process, new members in an organization will not have too much institutional background or operational knowledge. I remember starting at UCLA in the Center for Health Sciences. The corny joke delivered to all new employees during orientation was, “you could run a marathon in the building” because there are over 26 miles of corridor. I couldn’t even find my way through the building to the PACS offices from the Oral Radiology Department , let alone determine the operations and procedures of, and between, the two departments, or the expectations for my role with each (which in the future of my employment actually became quite significant). Obviously this is a pretty common issue and everyone coming into a new role should expect a learning curve. So the specific question is, what resources are available to help those who are new to increase their learning rate? But the larger question is, how can these same materials measure the health of the organization as a whole?