Five things a Chief Academic Officer should never believe

If you have heard one of these statements from your Chief Information Officer, it is time to ask your CIO to update themselves on emerging technologies. It may be a lack of understanding of today’s technology environment, or perhaps the CIO is just trying to cover up a bad decision. In both cases, it is apparent that the CIO is out of step with the mission and goals of the university and is also not aware of the impact of their decision on the business practices of the university.

1. Open Source software will save the university money. There is no free lunch with applications necessary to manage a complex organization like a university. Open Source will almost always result in additional staffing, and commercial applications will be more expensive to acquire. The new rush to cloud computing is too new and immature to evaluate on total cost of ownership. In the end it will amount to your university spending more up front for your enterprise systems, or if you want go open source you will pay significantly higher operational costs annually.
   
   
2. Capital investments in traditional telephony equipment are safe. This was true for 50 years and lots of CIOs who have spent millions upgrading traditional equipment will be embarrassed in the next three years. As a matter of fact, there are few traditional telephony vendors remaining; both Nortel and Lucent are or have been through reorganizations and are a shadow of themselves. Voice technologies have become just another application on a data network. IT organizations need to address change by adopting the right unified communication technologies and by reorganization the information technology department to reflect the changes in technology. On top of this you have the whole cell phone issue.
   
   
3. Emerging technologies like smartphones, netbooks and virtualized desktop computers will replace the traditional computer and cost less. Everyone is looking for the magic combination that will make computing relevant and cost less--that day is beyond the horizon. The basics of a computer are all still the same, whether it is a traditional notebook or a smart-phone: it still has a processor, memory, disk drives, and needs electricity to run. The smart CIO understands the role of all devices and has the right equipment in the right place. Remember a university is a more like a city and less like a corporation.
   
   
4. Return on investment and best business practices are not relevant to a university. Might have been true for the past decade but no longer. The current economic conditions require the CIO to understand the “business” of the university and to implement changes that were unheard of several years ago. Recently the University of Virginia announced the university would close all student computing labs in the next three years. Many CIOs are already building the case on why this is impossible at their university; we no longer have the luxury of staying the same and change is eminent. Your CIO needs to begin compiling a list of changes in business practices that will improve service and lower the cost of technology.
   
   
5. Web 2.0 is a fad. Many legacy IT staff (including CIOs) would like to think the Web 2.0 technologies will not impact enterprise applications like the ERP or the course management systems because of the significant work required to integrate the tools of social networking with enterprise applications. CIOs need to recognize the front door many students use today to access resources begin with applications like Facebook. In addition we have a new generation of students in high school that spend hours on YouTube rather than watch television. Time for the CIO to invest thought in how your campus IT departments are meeting the needs of the students.

Changes in Business Processes

The economic meltdown has resulted in unprecedented budget cuts, and its swath is broad and deep. The university president has two choices: the first is to retrench by placing many projects on hold, freeze pay increases, and hope for the best. The second would be use the opportunity to change the status quo. Higher education is not known for its efficiency, and we have been doing “university” the same way we have been doing it for decades. During that time many universities have invested heavily in technology, including ERP systems. Many observers inside and from the community have noticed the lack of change.

The university president willing to be a change agent can move their institution forward despite the economic challenges. It is very clear the faculty will continue to introduce change incrementally, and that is OK. Faculty have been supportive of systems that improve teaching and research, and are critical of systems that are considered busy work. Investments in the academic infrastructure will continue to be important.

The change can be realized in administrative functions university-wide. The college president should use the economic climate to bring changes which were impossible earlier. A starting point would be business process re-engineering. A good place to begin would be human resources and accounting processes. The president must be willing to push the university into new methods of conducing university business to recognize the greatest savings. The business world has used ERP systems as a foundation for business process improvement for the past decade with significant returns. The goal would be to generate significant savings to reinvest in academic programs. A byproduct would be organizational agility.

The president that chooses to put everything on hold and wait out the downturn will find all areas of the university being adversely affected across the board budget cuts.

Other areas universities might review for change would be libraries merging student support organizations with IT—many libraries have shown leadership with the Information Commons concept. Another area of interest would be to rethink faculty support organizations (teaching learning centers, research support, library support) into a new organization. Bold rather than timid should define the roadmap of the next twenty-four months.

A number of individuals will say this cannot be done, higher education will never change. Interesting that Obama is choosing this time to change national policy on a number of issues. Who would have thought a year ago we would consider making student financial aid an entitlement or higher education would experience a huge boost in research funding? It is time to act.