Still on track: Strategic Plan for IT

Monday, January 24, 2011

Work on UW-Madison’s IT Strategic Plan is moving forward, with a renewed emphasis on action with measures for success.

Following a lengthy process of gathering input from the campus, teams identified 38 initiatives that resulted in formal charters, but attempts to prioritize these initiatives in 2009-10 met with mixed success. To reinvigorate the IT planning process, Interim CIO Joanne Berg met with representatives of campus governance groups, including the Information Technology Committee (ITC) and the Madison Technology Advisory Group (MTAG), to propose a set of five information technology investment recommendations that can be addressed quickly:

IT Strategic Plan Task Force members

Bobby Burrow, Madison Technical Advisory Group (MTAG), Administrative Information Management Services (AIMS)
Katrina Forrest, Information Technology Committee (ITC) Chair, Department of Bacteriology
Dan Jacobsohn, MTAG, School of Education
Mathew Jones, ITC, Department of Physiology
Rob Kohlhepp, MTAG, College of Engineering
John Krogman, DoIT
Cathy O’Bryan, DoIT
Jim Phelps, DoIT
Brian Rust, CIO Communications
Rhonda Thompson, MTAG, School of Veterinary Medicine
Alan Wolf, Community of Educational Technology Support (ComETS), DoIT

  • Improve IT support for research
  • Overhaul IT funding, including:
    • Reviewing campus standards for IT staffing
    • Improving our understanding of IT governance on campus
    • Deciding how the CIO fits into all of this.
  • Implement the Identity and Access Management software
  • Invest in the campus’s data centers review
  • Develop the data stewardship policies we need to ensure security

Focusing attention on these five areas reflects a pragmatic view of the pace of change on campus and differing outlooks on priorities. “We understand that you can’t work on 38 things at once,” Berg says. “Instead, we want to coalesce around the most important, fundamental things we can do in the short term.”
To that end, Berg has formed an 11-member task force that will take a first pass at her five investment recommendations and answer these questions for each:

  • What is the risk to the institution of not doing the recommendation?
  • What are the gains — for whom, how large, when?
  • What are the indicators of success?
  • What will it look like when this recommendation is mature? What will be different? Better?
  • What will it look like if the recommendation does not mature? What will be worse?

The task force first met on January 7, with more meetings planned for January 25 and February 2. Based on the work of the task force, Berg expects to submit specific proposals to the Chancellor by mid-February. Work on projects in the five areas should start in the spring.
Berg stresses that the initiatives outlined earlier in the IT Strategic Plan exercise are still viable. “Just because some of the 38 initiatives don’t appear on this list of five does not mean that they aren’t important,” she says. “But an even greater priority for the campus is to energize this planning process and establish momentum going forward. That is happening now.”
For more information on the progress of UW-Madison’s IT Strategic Plan, see www.cio.wisc.edu/plan

DoIT’s Big Ten

DoIT leadership has selected ten of the original IT Plan charters based on several criteria: alignment with the Campus Strategic Framework; the Madison Undergraduate Initiative; impact on the campus community; added campus efficiency or functions; and environmental energy (green) impact. These ten initiatives are:

  • Data Center Services — Establish core campus data center resources and provide them at a competitive price (or free) depending on the service.
  • Mobile Computing — Develop an enterprise service for users of mobile devices.
  • Identity and Access Management (IAM) — Provide shared IAM services to reduce duplication.
  • Data Storage and Retrieval — Establish core campus services for storage, retrieval, backup, data mining and access.
  • Campus Collaboration Tools — Provide tools and services for teaching, learning, research, outreach and campus services needs.
  • Equip Classrooms and Learning Spaces — Pursue design strategies to upgrade facilities for learning.
  • Research support — Select and deploy research productivity tools to support collaborative research on campus and across the globe.
  • Campus Administrative Systems — Develop human resources, payroll, student records, and other major systems.
  • Offer a Suite of Instructional Technologies eLearning Roadmap — Help to explore approaches to shared teaching and learning challenges.
  • Flexible Enterprise Services/Licensing — Help to reduce duplication and costs, improve service, and set up an infrastructure service portfolio for campus use.

For details, go here.