Planning Updates

April 11, 2025

In late March our working groups concluded and helped us identify some important outcomes, strategic themes and directions, a framework for categorizing strategic projects, and some initial thoughts on where to focus for the first 12-18 months of the plan. For those looking closely at our timeline, you’ll see that we are a bit behind our original schedule, but we have now entered the final phase of the initial planning process and are developing roadmaps based on the work done to date. We’re hopeful that everything will be wrapped up by mid-to-late May. We did want to share some of what we’ve developed so far.

Strategic Themes

Several common threads developed from our conversations, leading to the following strategic themes:

• Enable global impact teaching, research and outreach

• Modernize and optimize administrative applications and data platforms

• Improve the customer experience

• Expand capabilities to use, manage, and protect data

• Strengthen technology and data governance 

Target Outcomes

Following these themes, we’ve identified the following outcomes we want to see from our plan:

• Provide an infrastructure for increasing compute, data, and AI intensive research

• Improve constituents’ satisfaction with IT services and solutions 

• Expand and improve core university IT services

• Enable more intuitive, efficient, and integrated administrative processes and services

• Develop a collaborative, capable, and engaged community of IT professionals

Strategic Direction 

To achieve the above outcomes, we believe there are certain strategic directions the institution needs to agree upon, including to:

1. Create shared service catalogs, adopt service management methods, and integrated points of access to IT support.

2. Adopt a services framework and expand core university services.

3. Streamline access to specialized technologies and support for teaching and research. 

4. Sustain and enhance compute, storage, and networking for research.

5. Improve support for data life-cycle management.

6. Improve data governance roles, practices, and tools.

7. Confirm a roadmap and begin modernization and optimization of enterprise solutions (e.g., ERP) 

Strategic Framework

As we continue building a more complete roadmap, there is a need for a framework to provide some context and connection between the suggested work. We have identified three groupings that we intend to use as that framework.

Foundational Work

Foundational work is a set of projects and activities designed to construct a solid footing for our other work. It’s often work that doesn’t require new funding but does require people and time to properly understand what needs to be done. This work includes: 

• Building readiness for multiple strategic themes.

• Prioritizing the mitigation areas of technology debt or risk, establishing standards, adopting shared IT processes and tools, and improvements to existing core services.

• Continuous improvement around communication and collaboration.

Optimization Work 

Optimization work is focused on making better use of existing technology already available at the institution. This work includes:

• Improving existing capabilities and processes.

• Prioritizing work to establish new core services; improve service management and service delivery; and enhance existing IT solutions in research, teaching and operations.

Modernization Work 

Modernization work is meant to increase the institution’s ability to leverage technology to meet mission critical needs. This work includes:

• Introducing new capabilities and technologies.

• Prioritization of work around replacement of legacy applications to meet new requirements and harnessing emerging technologies, especially in the Enterprise Resource System (ERP) and Enterprise Research Administration (ERA) spaces.

We look forward to sharing another update as we finish the draft of the institutional IT strategic plan. 

Nov 11, 2024 

With the conclusion of the working group recruiting phase, we are pleased to announce that we have 96 people representing 27 departments/colleges/institutes who will be working with us to build the IT strategic plan. 60% of our volunteers are from areas outside the Division of Information Technology (including some folks from our remote campuses), with representation from regular faculty, AP faculty, and staff. We believe this diverse set of views and experiences will form a strong foundation for building a shared vision for IT across the institution. The working groups will begin meeting November 14 and continue through the middle of February. 

Oct. 29, 2024

After several months of meetings with stakeholders, the initial phase of the planning process has come to an end. We have identified six focus areas (IT organizational capabilities, IT services, data and analytics, research IT, teaching and learning technologies, and administrative IT) that we will use to structure specific conversations. We have also identified four catalysts (IT security, artificial intelligence, IT infrastructure, and user experience management) that are common across all focus areas and will be discussed within the context of those focus areas. Recruiting for the focus areas has begun and will continue through Nov. 8, 2024. The first focus area meetings will begin shortly thereafter and continue through February.