University of California, Davis
Creating a New Information Technology Reality: Strategic Directions for the Campus
December, 1992
Report of the Information Technology Strategic Planning Committee
Information Technology Strategic Planning Committee Members
The Information Technology Strategic Planning Committee wishes to thank those who served on its five issue-specific subcommittees, those who participated in focus group meetings, those who read and commented on drafts of this report, and the hundreds of members of the campus community who attended the information technology discussion meetings, held in March 1991, and who offered their suggestions and viewpoints.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This Strategic Directions report presents a vision of the role of information technologies in the advancement of the University of California, Davis toward the fulfillment of its mission and the attainment of its instruction, research and service goals, over the next three to five years. The strategic priorities and directions outlined in the report treat the campus technology environment as a unified and integrated infrastructure which supports all of these classic missions. In so doing it follows the guidance of the campus Academic Plan to "avoid the pitfalls of conceiving research, teaching, and public service as competing, mutually exclusive goals that need to be ranked in order of importance."
The Information Technology Strategic Planning Committee spent eight months in committee and subcommittee work preparing the working papers for this report. After several background briefings the committee held a week of open campus community meetings to discuss the information technology environment. Several hundred people attended those meetings. After developing a series of working papers around the key issues identified in the campus meetings, the committee held seven focus group sessions to elicit feedback and suggestions for this report. The report consists of a description of a new Resources Model for information technologies, a series of strategic priorities, outcomes and associated action steps, and an Appendix. The Appendix includes the summaries of campus discussions, the full subcommittee reports, the summaries of focus group discussions, and an environmental scan that provides a context in which to develop the plan.
The strategic directions outlined in this report will result in the creation, evolution, and implementation of an information technology environment that is relevant, empowering, and based upon an architecture flexible enough to enable rapid adjustment to unpredictable change. Strategic use of information technologies will enable the campus community to leverage scarce resources, better manage information as the expensive and essential resource it represents, and provide tools to make it possible for the campus to function at its maximum potential even in times of restricted resources. Information technologies foster partnerships, collaborations, and the creative reframing of problems that will finally yield a campus enabled to transform its processes and practices.
People are the focus of the envisioned outcomes because information technologies affect the quality and the tangible results of the experience of students, faculty, and staff at the University of California, Davis. The recommended action steps will enact conditions in which information technologies will enable people to attain their goals.
FINDINGS
- There is near unanimous agreement that the current recharge model limits access to and innovation with information technologies. It has created a haves and have nots culture on the campus.
- People make decisions on the basis of recharge avoidance instead of the most effective and efficient solution for both the unit and the campus.
- Campus units spend a substantial amount of time and money charging each other for services and in developing elaborate work arounds and bookkeeping systems to keep track of the charges.
- The recharge system has the effect of being a disincentive to the use of information technologies, and an incentive for the use of people, paper, and pencil.
- Because the traditional academic culture understands the need for accommodating increased workload with people and human effort more than with technology, old technology often remains entrenched, requiring extra personnel costs that could be avoided with a more dynamic amortization cycle. Moreover, the cost to maintain this aging and outdated equipment is considerable.
- Have not units are finding it difficult to stay current with their disciplines because they are not connected to the communication network and they do not have access to discipline-specific databases and instructional software.
- The existing research infrastructure is costly and inadequate for the requirements of the broad campus community. Researchers require high speed network connections, access to expensive specialized equipment, e.g., GIS hardware and software, and data storage and backup support.
- Researchers in the social sciences and humanities require access to information technologies. However, in contrast to the sciences and engineering, research funding agencies seldom fund the cost of such equipment; they, instead, assume that it is part of the campus infrastructure.
- Students have a less enriching experience during their campus careers both because of frustration with antiquated registration and record keeping procedures and because of less than adequate exposure to information technologies in pursuit of their studies.
To achieve the new information technology reality described in this report, the campus must adopt a new model for the allocation of resources for information technologies. Since the deliberations of the Information Technology Strategic Planning Committee and the discussions with the campus community returned time and again to the issue of resources and financing, the presentation of a new resources model prior to the delineation of strategic priorities and specific action steps provides the framework for their informed consideration.
Strategic Outcome:
To create an information technology environment appropriate to a large, complex, Research university, the University of California, Davis campus will adopt a new model for allocating resources for information technologies. The new model will support instruction, recognize that the research computing environment is highly decentralized and heterogeneous, and facilitate outreach and services. The recommended model consists of a mix of free and recharged components.
Action Steps:
- Provide a base level of service, funded centrally by a campus allocation off the top, at no visible cost to the individual user or department, including:
- Support for student instruction
- Access to administrative systems and databases required to perform one's assigned duties, e.g., student, financial, payroll, personnel systems.
- Office, lab, classroom, and dormitory room access to the network.
- HELP desk services.
- Access to training.
- General consultation.
- Site license management.
- Electronic mail.
- Student and faculty accounts.
- Campuswide databases, administrative information resources, and MELVYL.
- Center for Advanced Information Technology.
- Replace full cost recovery with cross subsidies, financial incentives and disincentives, and value added charges to reduce the net costs of information technology to the campus.
- Design and equip classrooms and other learning environments for the easy use of information technologies, including the wiring of classrooms for data and video transmission.
- Eliminate the regressive 10% tax to departments for class accounts. Allow faculty members the option of using class or individual student accounts for course work.
- Identify an appropriate source of funds to support a campus infrastructure for research purposes:
- support the network, network-related services, and databases
- subsidize the cost of shared resources (including cycles and specialized equipment) in distributed facilities
- leverage the acquisition of technology, including matching funds
- provide support services for research.
- Establish a fund to enable have not units to acquire appropriate technology and support services.
- Assist academic and administrative units in developing plans to provide every faculty, and staff member with the technology required to access and use essential data and tie the allocation of funds directly to the advancement of these plans.
- Charge for value-added services, e.g., in-depth consultation and services, maintenance, special requests, network-based backup and disk storage services, use of specialized facilities, specialized consulting.
- Charge a one-time network access fee for each new voice, data or video connection and bundle monthly voice and data rates into one charge and one bill (posted electronically).
- Establish a mechanism for units to share the staff resources required to support information technologies.
- Target base level and value added training and support services at unit systems managers and coordinators (departmental experts).
- Encourage the continual updating of information technology hardware and software.
- Develop a life cycle planning and capital expenditure model for centralized campus resources that incorporates the scale and capacity required by the local campus community, e.g., adequate disk storage, capacity appropriate to software and computational requirements, ubiquitous networking.
- Target services at current and emerging technologies.
- Set up a loan and leveraging fund using Information Technology (IT) reserves, Instructional Use of Computing (IUC) funds, and other campus funds to provide loans and matching funds for units to procure and update information technologies.
- Set up a used equipment resale program that includes a mechanism for the off-campus sale of equipment that is outdated or incompatible with the campus computing environment.
- Develop a procedure to identify and purchase site licenses.
- Establish a site license fund to seed purchases.
- Institute a mechanism to replenish the fund.
- Provide network server services.
- Provide financial incentives, e.g., special discounts, for students to purchase their own computers.
- Establish a budgetary mechanism for units to accumulate funds over more than one fiscal year for the purchase, upgrading and replacement of information technologies.
- Ensure that the funding model encompasses support for interdepartmental/ interdisciplinary projects and programs, and disciplinary core facilities, as well as traditional departmental funding.
- Appoint a committee to develop new criteria for the allocation of IUC funds in conformance with these recommendations.
- Review, assess and revise (as appropriate) this model annually.
This section describes a vision of the information technology environment on the University of California, Davis campus in terms of seventeen strategic outcomes, and recommends the action steps necessary to transform that vision into a new reality by 1995.
Information technologies must be judged by their effectiveness in helping meet system and campus goals and missions. Information technologies are a means to accomplish campus missions, not an end. Each priority and any forthcoming tactical and operational plans, must ultimately be related to either: 1) a goal in the Academic Planning statement issued by the Academic Planning Council, as it is the basis for identifying key planning issues and strategies for advancing and strengthening the missions of UC Davis; 2) campus projects which further the academic, administrative and research missions of the campus; or 3) needs identified and articulated by the campus community.
This section describes processes designed to ensure that Information Technology (IT) projects and services meet the criteria of relevance.
Strategic Outcome:
Information Technology (IT) projects, products and services will be conceived, planned, and implemented on the basis of their relevance to the mission of the University of California, Davis, with full participation by broad based campus constituencies, and in recognition of the UC Davis heritage of commitment to land-grant origins and excellence in undergraduate teaching, concern for quality of life, and traditions of collegiality and interdisciplinary cooperation.
Action Steps:
- Require that each Information Technology (IT) operational goal, project or service explicitly identify the way in which it furthers the mission of the campus.
- Require that all IT projects or services have specific campus sponsors, who have full ownership; that is, they take responsibility for deciding when, where and how information technologies can best be employed to meet their needs in implementing the recommendations or strategic initiatives of the academic plan.
- Require that the tactical and operational technology plans of departmental and unit managers identify how their efforts will further the campus mission and meet the campus goals set forth in the academic plan.
- Formally consult on a prescribed schedule with the faculty through, at a minimum, the Senate Committee on Computing and the Computing Administrative Advisory Committee and with ad hoc groups of constituents on project and service priorities throughout each fiscal year.
- Annually, conduct campus meetings which are open to all members of the campus community to comment on their concerns, problems and needs with regard to information technologies and IT.
- Issue an annual report that documents the concerns identified at the open campus meetings, and provides solutions and services for the problems and needs.
Strategic Outcome:
UC Davis will stay current with technology advancement and will achieve visibility as an innovator in selected areas of information technology by taking advantage of the position of Northern California as a leading region in the computer, electronics and media industries, and by encouraging joint information technology research and experimentation ventures by faculty, staff and students from a wide range of academic and administrative departments.
Action Steps:
- Encourage the expansion of information technology research on campus, by identifying and supporting partnerships with vendors, partnerships with other universities and academic institutions, and partnerships across academic and administrative departments.
- Encourage the use of off-campus high performance computing resources.
- Incorporate into faculty recruitment and assignment plans, the need to strengthen campus competence in conducting information technology research.
- Define an achievable number of areas in which UC Davis will strive to become a national leader in information technology, and ensure that leading edge technology is widely available on campus for experimentation and evaluation.
- Coordinate and leverage responses to the research and campus infrastructure needs so that they reinforce and support each other.
- Develop a collaborative relationship between research units and IT to foster the transition from research and development of technology into its actual application where appropriate and feasible.
- Encourage a collaborative relationship between the campus and the University of California, Davis Medical Center to develop joint campus-Medical Center research projects.
The recommendations in this document focus on one key theme: empowerment of all campus faculty, staff and students, through the use of appropriate technology, to do their best, most creative and most effective work in carrying out the campus mission and in attaining their professional and academic goals. This section describes the characteristics, scope, and nature of information technology capabilities required by the campus community.
Strategic Outcome:
Members of the campus community will be able to access information and information resources from wherever they are, using any appropriate mode and following ethical and legal practices.
Action Steps:
- Create an information technology environment that is based on a reliable and ubiquitous network, simple to use interfaces, consistent technical support, campuswide education and training, and life cycle planning for technology platforms.
- Identify and implement applications systems that make information resources readily available and accessible to all members of the campus community.
- Provide easy-to-use, ubiquitous access to information technologies and the campus network in the classrooms, offices, libraries, laboratories, and living and meeting spaces (on and off campus) of all members of the campus community.
- Collaborate with the Library to provide the campus community with access to information.
- Implement programs and practices that inform the campus community about ethical and legal issues associated with the use of information technologies.
Strategic Outcome:
Members of the campus community will become effective users of technology, will make efficient and skilled use of technology resources in their work, and will make good decisions about technology in terms of both the present and the future, resulting in a reduction in overall risks and increased control of overall costs.
Action Steps:
- Provide easily-accessible, flexible and informed guidance to the entire campus community on appropriate use of current technologies.
- Provide informed guidance to all campus decision-makers on the future directions in information technologies, and the potential campuswide strategic applications of technologies.
Strategic Outcome:
Students, faculty, and staff will be increasingly self-sufficient in their use of information technologies, because they will have the tools and support necessary to become self-sufficient, and because technologies will be accessible and as easy-to-use as possible.
Action Steps:
- Integrate the entire support environment, including local departmental support personnel, helpdesks, instruction, on-line help, documentation, autotutorials, campuswide information systems/bulletin boards, so that they all work together to make the campus community as self-sufficient as possible.
- Develop user interface standards for all locally-developed and supported applications.
- Formally involve representative groups of the campus community (both beginners and experts) in designing and testing all major applications.
- Offer a range of choices of products and applications so that flexible, easy-to-use tools are provided for all technology sophistication levels.
- Develop a network of departmental contacts and a mechanism for their training and continuing education complemented by a program of position-independent/staff initiated professional development offerings, and the incorporation of an information technologies component in the orientation program for new academic and administrative unit heads.
To create the new information technology reality as quickly and as effectively as possible, we recommend that technology infrastructures and supporting organizational structures have certain characteristics.
Strategic Outcome:
To implement important technology projects and goals successfully, and to use technology resources more effectively, the support structure for information technologies will evolve from one oriented around administrative boundaries and bodies such as departments or colleges, to one more logically oriented around groupings of disciplinary, methodological or geographically-proximal interest.
Action Steps:
- Establish a dynamically-responsive structure to support a distributed information technology environment, blending centralization and decentralization in an effective manner.
- Strengthen the Information Technology (IT) organization's role in centralized coordination of decentralized resources.
- Provide centralized leadership and support for campuswide activities which are common to multiple units or constituencies.
- Provide leadership and shared personnel and resources to assist individual units to achieve their unique goals and objectives.
- Assist units in the development of technology plans, and develop campuswide plans to complement and enhance unit plans.
- Assist academic units and students in attaining specialized information technology goals and objectives, and coordinate development of and access to specialized facilities by encouraging partnership and collaboration among members of the campus community.
Strategic Outcome:
A majority of students and faculty will have access to their own personal workstations, and the campus will begin a corresponding transition from investment in large numbers of open access sites with low-end software and hardware, to emphasis on investments which provide network and services access for personally-owned workstations, e.g., docking-stations, and to shared campus instructional facilities with high-end equipment and software which individuals cannot typically afford.
Action Steps:
- Negotiate favorable discounts with vendors and provide information to parents, incentives, financial aid, and self-funding rental program alternatives so that students have their own workstations, rather than depending on large open access labs.
- Provide easy connections to the campus network from all living units, on or off campus.
- Provide campus facilities for instruction to meet the higher-end technological requirements not available on student-owned equipment.
Strategic Outcome:
Faculty, staff, students, alumni/ae, and citizens of the State of California will be able to transact all necessary business, exchange and obtain information, and work collaboratively from their offices, classrooms, and residences, through a dependable, responsive integrated voice-video-data network which transcends the limits of time and distance and supports world-wide interconnectivity.
Action Steps:
- Provide ubiquitous access (connections) to the network in every appropriate study, teaching, research, administrative and living environment.
- Provide an array of end-user devices in the work places of faculty, and staff, and in the study, library, and teaching areas for students.
- Use information technologies to deliver instruction and information resources to remote sites on and off campus.
- Use information technologies to support lifelong learning and the maintenance of professional currency by alumni/ae, other postgraduate students, and for other outreach and service programs.
- Support the creation of the Davis Community Network.
Strategic Outcome:
Faculty will be able to display computer output, demonstrate remote computer processing and database access, and use scientific visualization, animation and modeling, in a substantial number of classrooms, representing a wide range of class sizes (from seminar to large lecture hall), throughout the campus.
Action Steps:
- Provide network connections to every classroom.
- Identify classrooms across campus for upgrade to include instructional technology support.
- Develop specifications for new classrooms, and incorporate them into architect and engineering requirements.
Strategic Outcome:
Researchers in all disciplines will have access to appropriate information technologies.
Action Steps:
- Implement the recommended Resources Model.
- Include research infrastructure requirements in plans for the campus information technology architecture and environment.
To utilize all of the funding and resource investments (whether financial or human capital), the campus must employ the concept of leveraging strategically. No one source of funding or resources is sufficient to realize strategic initiatives. Through the encouragement of collaboration, partnerships, and coordination of efforts, smaller increments of resources can be pooled to accomplish relatively large projects or deliver support services which would not otherwise be possible. Based on the fundamental principle of leveraging scarce resources, this section presents recommendations for incentives which encourage the sharing of investment and resources.
Strategic Outcome:
Campus administrators and decision-makers will establish a new model for allocation of resources for information technologies which defines and provides a base level of centrally-funded infrastructure, including service, and which evaluates investments in information technologies on the basis of productivity, efficiency, and quality improvement, as well as costs.
Action Steps:
- Implement the recommended Resources Model.
- Assist units in developing funding approaches to address unit technology plans.
Strategic Outcome:
Members of the campus community will build partnerships within the University, and with industry, and will behave collaboratively in their development and use of information technology resources because of incentives built into the resource allocation model.
Action Steps:
- Encourage the sharing of specialized facilities, databases, and distributed cycles through formal incentive programs.
- Pursue aggressively the development of long-term partnerships and joint studies with vendors, consortia and alliances.
- Work closely with other campuses and UCOP to pool resources and share development of or acquisition of needed hardware, software, and networking solutions.
Campus staff and faculty will be responsible for managing information, as they are any other valuable resource, and will conduct administrative operations in a location-neutral, electronic environment with students, faculty, and staff engaged in collaborative workgroup activities. Because information is the most ubiquitous and expensive resource an educational institution has, it should be managed accordingly. This section details recommendations for the formal management of information organization-wide.
Strategic Outcome:
Faculty, staff, and students will have easy, reliable access to current, accurate, and complete administrative information, from administrative information systems that are well-designed for maintainability, auditability and integrity.
Action Steps:
- Define the core administrative and departmental application systems and their interrelationships, and develop a plan for their rapid implementation.
- Develop a strategy, for implementation in a distributed computing environment, that will support strategic data collection and distribution.
- Define compatibility standards for the sharing of data within the campus environment.
- Establish standards and a process for the development of administrative applications that ensures their maintainability, auditability and integrity.
- Develop standards of responsibility and accountability for the appropriate use of technology in administrative processes.
Strategic Outcome:
Faculty, staff, and students will be well-informed about what information resources are available, will be able to obtain information easily, and will be able to integrate the use of collaborative information technologies into their work and into local resources seamlessly, whether for instruction, research or administrative activities.
Action Steps:
- Design departmental systems and databases that supplement the central systems and articulate with them.
- Implement paper-reducing technology, including electronic approvals and the ability to generate, transmit and import data from central databases into electronic documents.
- Implement network-based print and reprographic capabilities, including electronic publishing.
- Advance the use of collaborative information technologies, including electronic mail, telecommunications, bulletin boards, conferencing systems, and public information networks.
Strategic Outcome:
Faculty, staff, and students will be able to employ electronic administration to enhance the quality of the academic enterprise.
Action Steps:
- Use data stored in campus databases to enhance student advising.
- Furnish students with direct access to the student databases for their information and update.
- Furnish researchers with access to financial and research databases for budget information.
In order to empower UC Davis faculty, staff, and students, all technology tools must meet certain fundamental criteria, which are described in this section.
Strategic Outcome:
Faculty, staff and students will have available to them the desktop capability and functionality appropriate to their tasks, based on a common, feature-rich, customizable system interface.
Action Steps:
- Provide desktop access to current hardware and software appropriate to the task.
- Provide the ability to conduct data searches irrespective of data location.
- Provide network-based services such as file storage and backup.
- Provide adequate central and distributed security, speed, processing capability, and disk storage.
Strategic Outcome:
Students will graduate with the information technology skills appropriate to their disciplines, and will be adequately prepared for the information-intensive environment in which they will live and work.
Action Steps:
- Assist academic units and the K-12 sectors to develop basic computing and communications skills for undergraduate and graduate students.
- Establish an instructional support structure within the Information Technology organization that encourages faculty to experiment with new pedagogy, which maintains a basic fluency level in information technology for new arrivals on campus, and which provides for dissemination of new technologies through an aggressive program of investigation, innovation, and training.
Creating a new information technology reality is not a zero-sum game. Every member of the campus community can benefit directly from a plan that is sensitive to the wide range of needs and resources represented by each department and each individual. A new campus technology culture based on partnership, collaboration, and creative reframing of problems, coupled with a new model for the allocation of resources for information technology, will bring about a new information technology reality and a new tradition of rapid progress. A campus community, thus empowered, will use information technologies to transform its processes and practices.
Strategic plans are, by definition, general in nature; their purpose is to set direction and to establish priorities. Upon acceptance of the strategic directions outlined in this report, the Information Technology (IT) organization, in conjunction with the campus community, will develop specific operational and tactical plans to implement the action steps and attain the strategic outcomes within the context of the recommended Resources Model. However, the velocity of change in the information technology arena continues to increase. Consequently, as this planning effort has gone forward, IT has, in consultation with the campus community, begun to operationalize some of the recommended action steps, e.g., planning for the campus network, site license management.
Strategic planning is an ongoing process. The strategic outcomes and action steps set forth in this document require periodic review and assessment. The Information Technology organization is a learning organization, focused on continual improvement. Consequently Information Technology will review and update its objectives annually against the goals established through the ongoing strategic planning process.
- Summaries of Campus Discussions (10)
- Subcommittee Reports
- Summaries of Focus Group Discussions (6)
- Environmental Scan
Footnotes:
Information technologies include communication networks; voice, data and video media; hardware; software, and information resources. Information Technology (IT) is the campus organizational unit charged with coordinating and enabling the use of information technologies.
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Focus on People: The term people is meant to be inclusive of all persons who have access to campus facilities: students, faculty, staff, post-docs, visiting scholars, residents, alumni/ae.
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Off the top: The centrally funded ("off the top") model would likely require a reallocation of existing campus resources.
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