June 11, 2010

Decentralization, User Emergence, or a PR issue?

Jun. 11, 2010 at 08:38 PM | By Todd Gibby | Comment Count

Decentralization or Consolidation?

“Shrinking CIO” seems to point out that one of the consequences (or is it a cause (?)) of the declining role of CIOs is that technology purchases are increasingly made in a decentralized way at a departmental level. The issue of centralization versus decentralization is a well-chronicled one in higher education; and I’ve also observed some increasingly complex dynamics playing out on this front.

On the one hand, my 12+ years of working with campus IT departments indicates to me that purchasing seems to be growing more centralized, not less so. This seems logical enough – difficult economic times call for belt-tightening, which leads to pooling of resources in an effort to achieve economies of scale. This is not only happening within individual campuses, but also across multi-campus institutions, state systems, and loosely bound higher education consortia. The mandate is clear – expenses must be managed, and centralized buying moves the needle.

User Emergence?

On the other hand, it does seem that the departmental or “functional users” of any given system have an increasingly strong voice in technology selection and purchase – a trend I applaud. But, this appears to be less driven by a decentralization of buying, and more by an ever-increasing appreciation that the people who are actually going to be using a software solution should have a strong say in selecting that system. Additionally, this trend has been bolstered by the increasing availability of cloud computing solutions that do not require (as much) direct IT involvement to deploy. In any case, IT appears to increasingly be playing a collaborative or supporting role in vendor evaluations; rather than being the lone or leading decision-maker.

Like all things, this trend can go too far. For instance, I recently observed a major technology evaluation in which one college selected a solution with the balanced input of both central IT and a committee of functional users. By the time a recommendation was presented t o the president, the functional users had altered their position and engaged in an unproductive battle with IT. In this type of adversarial circumstance, everyone loses. Likewise, if a decision is made solely by functional users without IT’s sign-off at the outset, downstream integration of the solution into the university’s technology landscape can become unnecessarily challenging.

Simply a PR Issue?

These items underscore a directly related issue: the perception of IT among other campus constituents. As Laster points out in his “New Normal” interview, perceptions range from one of IT as an operational / commoditized “keeper of electronics” on campus, to one as a highly strategic, senior-level advisor that assists the provost or president to make far-seeing decisions. The “keeper of electronics” perception is an unfortunate one, which can cast IT in the surprising role of being a gate-keeping impediment to progress. In many cases, this is unfair and fails to acknowledge either (a) IT’s resource constraints (this department seems to be ground-zero for the “do more with less” mantra of recent times) and (b) the burdensome risk-management responsibilities which IT shoulders. “Shrinking CIO” quotes Georgetown’s CIO, David Lambert on this point: “It’s easy to feel some days like I am not the CIO, but the risk-management officer for the institution, because every element of risk management gets comes back to IT.

On the other hand, these articles also hint at some of the factors that have contributed to the perception of IT as being non-strategic in the first place. One such implication is that some in IT prefer gadgetry to problem-solving. “Shrinking CIO” calls out an Educause report in which an unidentified CIO is quoted as saying, “What I used to love about being CIO was getting a chance to be directly involved in small, cool projects led by faculty; now I find myself spending most of my time talking with security auditors and those involved in regulatory compliance.” This quote may to be taken out of context. Still, it certainly doesn’t convey the seriousness of purpose one would expect of a senior business / campus executive.

Most substantively, though, is the level of service that campus professionals expect versus what they believe they receive from their respective IT organizations. Laster outlines a progressive model of IT as “professional services firm,” through which his organization strives to provide outstanding service to campus constituents. And while I have also seen this approach succeed elsewhere, the practical reality is that such a model is challenging to implement and isn’t the typical model at a lot of schools today. In fact, departmental administrators often express their belief that they can get more accomplished by going around IT than trying to work through it. This observation is made worse by the juggling act IT needs to perform. In addition to coping with (a) resource constraints and (b) demand for increased services, IT is also frequently expected to take a leading role in cutting costs. Quite a challenge.

Closing

All of this brings us full circle to the central theme across the three articles’ cited in my introduction: technology will continue to be an extremely important force among higher education institutions going forward; but the actual form, role, and responsibilities of IT are in constant evolution. It is important that we seek to separate perceptions from reality in terms of where we are today and how we got here, in order to optimize the benefits of technology going forward.