1. The EDUCAUSE 2017 Top 10 IT Issues
Gerard Au, Susan Grajek, Rebecca Davis, John Landers, Marden Paul, Michele Norin
Gerard Au • Susan Grajek • Rebecca Frost Davis
John Landers • Marden Paul

2. Introduction to the Top 10 IT Issues Discussion of the issues
Today’s session
Introduction to the Top 10 IT Issues
Discussion of the issues
Questions
Introduction (8 minutes)
Overview of the top 10 (Susan)
Ask audience to vote on the ones they’d like to discuss (Sli.Do)
The vote: Pick your top theme:
Information security
Focused and relevant priorities (strategic leadership, sustainable funding, higher education affordability, sustainable staffing)
Strategic use of data (student success and completion, data-informed decision-making, data management and governance)
Next-gen enterprise IT
Digital transformation of learning
Let audience ask their questions...and upvote them too
From last year:
Which ones dropped off
Which are new
What has changed among those that are still there
Surprises? Things that didn’t make the cut?
Issues interviews with questions for audience and for panel (30-35 minutes) Three themes (10 minutes each) Here are the questions from the article:
What’s the elevator speech? How would you describe this issue briefly and in plain English?
Why should institutional leadership – President, Chancellor, Provost, Boards – care about this issue?
Who outside the IT department should care most about this issue?
What is perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of this issue?
What advice would you give to:
Institutions that are behind or just getting started
Institutions that are in the middle of working on this
Institutions that want to optimize in this area
What opportunities does this issue provide for institutions that excel with it?
What are the risks related to this issue? They might be risks of ignoring it, risks of getting it wrong, risks of moving too quickly, risks of under-funding it, or something else? What does the future look like if we get this right?
If your IT Issue was a Disney villain(ess), who would it be?
Open questions from the audience (10 minutes)

3. The Slate Change leadership Data management and governance
Data-informed decision making
Digital transformation of learning
Digital transformation of scholarship and research
Faculty adoption of technology
Higher education affordability
Identity management
Information security
IT partnerships
IT service management
Next-gen enterprise IT
Next-gen IT workforce
Online education
Strategic leadership
Student success and completion
Sustainable funding
Sustainable staffing

4. The Vote Change leadership Data management and governance
Data-informed decision making
Digital transformation of learning
Digital transformation of scholarship and research
Faculty adoption of technology
Higher education affordability
Identity management
Information security
IT partnerships
IT service management
Next-gen enterprise IT
Next-gen IT workforce
Online education
Strategic leadership
Student success and completion
Sustainable funding
Sustainable staffing

5. The Top 10 IT Issues
Information security: Developing a holistic, agile approach to reducing institutional exposure to information security threats
Student success and completion: Effectively applying data and predictive analytics to improve student success and completion
Data-informed decision making: Ensuring that business intelligence, reporting, and analytics are relevant, convenient, and used by administrators, faculty, and students
Strategic leadership: Repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as a strategic partner with institutional leadership
Sustainable funding: Developing IT funding models that sustain core services, support innovation, and facilitate growth
Data management and governance: Improving the management of institutional data through data standards, integration, protection, and governance
Higher education affordability: Prioritizing IT investments and resources in the context of increasing demand and limited resources
Sustainable staffing: Ensuring adequate staffing capacity and staff retention as budgets shrink or remain flat and as external competition grows
Next-gen enterprise IT: Developing and implementing enterprise IT applications, architectures, and sourcing strategies to achieve agility, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and effective analytics
Digital transformation of learning: Collaborating with faculty and academic leadership to apply technology to teaching and learning in ways that reflect innovations in pedagogy and the institutional mission

6. Let’s talk: Pick your top two themes
Go to slido.com
Use the event code #6634
Use the app to submit questions for the Q and A too!

7. Let’s talk: Pick your top two themes
slido.com
event code #6634
Let’s talk: Pick your top two themes
Theme 1: Information Security
Information security: Developing a holistic, agile approach to reducing institutional exposure to information security threats
Theme 3: Strategic Use of Data
Student success and completion: Effectively applying data and predictive analytics to improve student success and completion
Data-informed decision making: Ensuring that business intelligence, reporting, and analytics are relevant, convenient, and used by administrators, faculty, and students
Data management and governance: Improving the management of institutional data through data standards, integration, protection, and governance
Theme 2: Focused and Relevant Priorities
Strategic leadership: Repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as a strategic partner with institutional leadership
Sustainable funding: Developing IT funding models that sustain core services, support innovation, and facilitate growth
Higher education affordability: Prioritizing IT investments and resources in the context of increasing demand and limited resources
Sustainable staffing: Ensuring adequate staffing capacity and staff retention as budgets shrink or remain flat and as external competition grows
Theme 4: Next-gen Enterprise IT
Next-gen enterprise IT: Developing and implementing enterprise IT applications, architectures, and sourcing strategies to achieve agility, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and effective analytics
Theme 5: Digital Transformation of Learning
Digital transformation of learning: Collaborating with faculty and academic leadership to apply technology to teaching and learning in ways that reflect innovations in pedagogy and the institutional mission
Information security
Focused and relevant priorities (strategic leadership, sustainable funding, higher education affordability, sustainable staffing)
Strategic use of data (student success and completion, data-informed decision-making, data management and governance)
Next-gen enterprise IT
Digital transformation of learning

8. Theme 1: Information Security
Gerard Au, Associate Vice President, Information Technology Services, California State University, San Bernardino Marden Paul, Director, Planning, Governance and Assessment, Office of the Chief Information Officer, University of Toronto Information security: Developing a holistic, agile approach to reducing institutional exposure to information security threats
Questions to ask the audience:
(Starting rhetorically) -- By show of hands, who believes that information security is a critical issue for your university (and the world in general?) (MP)
Why? (try rhetorical/calling on someone if you can) (GA)
If no responses, lead with “we are creators and stewards of intellectual property” -- including groundbreaking research, PII, student records… -- much of it the envy of governments, spy agencies, industry, criminals…
By show of hands, would you say that your senior leadership ranks Information Security as a key institutional issue? (MP)
By show of hands, has your institution RECENTLY developed/expanded Information Security programs because the issue has grown in prominence? (GA)
Questions Susan will ask:
Marden: Depending on the response -- If no gap: Do you think differently? If a gap: Why is there a gap? (I call it a “Reality Gap”) and if so, what would you do about it? (This leads to the takeaway part)
Gerard: What kind of information security programs do you think are effective for the spectrum of responses -- from the “just beginning” to “mature” institutions?
EDUCAUSE

9. Theme 2: Focused and Relevant Priorities
Rebecca Frost Davis, Director of Instructional and Emerging Technology St. Edward’s University John Landers, PMO Lead, University Technology [U]Tech Case Western Reserve University Marden Paul, Director, Planning, Governance and Assessment, Office of the Chief Information Officer, University of Toronto Strategic leadership: Repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as a strategic partner with institutional leadership Sustainable funding: Developing IT funding models that sustain core services, support innovation, and facilitate growth Higher education affordability: Prioritizing IT investments and resources in the context of increasing demand and limited resources Sustainable staffing: Ensuring adequate staffing capacity and staff retention as budgets shrink or remain flat and as external competition grows
Theme 2: Focused and Relevant Priorities
Strategic leadership: Repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as a strategic partner with institutional leadership
Sustainable funding: Developing IT funding models that sustain core services, support innovation, and facilitate growth
Higher education affordability: Prioritizing IT investments and resources in the context of increasing demand and limited resources
Sustainable staffing: Ensuring adequate staffing capacity and staff retention as budgets shrink or remain flat and as external competition grows

10. Theme 2: Focused and Relevant Priorities
For the audience: How is IT leadership situated within your institution?
Considered to have primarily an operational role where success is measured by the quality and uptime of services? (like the phones, electricity…)
Reporting to the Chief Business Officer with a specific mandate for leading information technologies that advance the administrative mission.
Reporting to the Provost/Chief Academic Officer with a specific mandate for leading information technologies that advance the academic mission.
A strategic partner with institutional leadership -- academic and administrative -- with a mandate to bring innovative information technology solutions to the institution’s key objectives.
John Landers, Case Western Reserve University Marden Paul, University of Toronto Strategic leadership: Repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as a strategic partner with institutional leadership
Questions to ask the audience:
John: How is your IT leadership situated within your institution? (Make a slide from this and ask for a show of hands)
Considered to have primarily an operational role where success is measured by the quality and uptime of services? (like the phones, electricity…)
Reporting to the Chief Business Officer with a specific mandate for leading information technologies that advance the administrative mission.
Reporting to the Provost/Chief Academic Officer with a specific mandate for leading information technologies that advance the academic mission.
A strategic partner with institutional leadership -- academic and administrative -- with a mandate to bring innovative information technology solutions to the institution’s key objectives.
Optional: How many of you think your IT leadership is correctly positioned within the institutional leadership?
Optional: How many of you think your IT services are perceived as meeting the needs of the institution?
Questions Susan will ask:
For those who think that there is a disconnect between perception and reality in the provision of IT services, and the position of IT leadership, what would you suggest be said/done to bring the perception and reality closer? (ask both)

11. Theme 2: Focused and Relevant Priorities
John Landers, Case Western Reserve University Marden Paul, University of Toronto Sustainable funding: Developing IT funding models that sustain core services, support innovation, and facilitate growth
Questions to ask the audience:
John: Is there an IT steering committee with institutional scope/oversight?
Optional: Do you have base funding to cover licensing, operations, and support of your core services, e.g., , telecom, Internet access, networks, wireless, ERP, SIS, LMS?
Optional: Are allocations to IT increasing/same/decreasing?
Optional: Do you have to make across-the-board IT budget cuts?
Do cuts hit your core services or are they protected?
Questions Susan will ask:
What are some of the techniques you’ve used to protect and even expand core services budgets? (John and Marden)
Optional: How would suggest that IT departments make the case for more funds for non-core services?
What’s an oft-neglected source of funds/support?

12. Theme 2: Focused and Relevant Priorities
John Landers, Case Western Reserve University Marden Paul, University of Toronto Higher education affordability: Prioritizing IT investments and resources in the context of increasing demand and limited resources
Marden: some combined variant of: Does your institution have a cyclical, institution-wide IT prioritising exercise? If there are divisional/faculty planning/prioritising exercises, do they roll up to an institutional view?
Optional: Has your institution had significant external pressures towards higher education affordability?
Optional: How can IT be partners for this?
Questions Susan will ask:
Ask both: How do we build the capacity for the inevitable - “This project needs to be done now and didn’t go through the prioritizing process”
Optional: What are some of the gaps you see in institutional prioritising exercises?
Optional: Does someone have a veto/override on the priority list?

13. Theme 2: Focused and Relevant Priorities
Rebecca Frost Davis, St. Edward’s University John Landers, Case Western Reserve University Sustainable staffing: Ensuring adequate staffing capacity and staff retention as budgets shrink or remain flat and as external competition grows
For the audience
What innovative solutions have you found to improve staff retention?
Rebecca: 3-minute think-pair-share: What innovative solutions have you found to improve staff retention?
Optional: Show of hands poll: for those who have lost staff, why?
Competition (other employers)
Budget cuts
Job dissatisfaction (overwhelming)
other?
Optional: Where (in what units) do you feel the most pressure in staffing and why?
Optional: What is the nature of your external competition?
Questions Susan will ask:
Ask both: What approaches are you taking to building capacity and keeping existing staff engaged and fresh?
EDUCAUSE

14. Theme 3: Strategic Uses of Data
Gerard Au, California State University, San Bernardino Rebecca Frost Davis, St. Edward’s University Marden Paul, University of Toronto Student success and completion: Effectively applying data and predictive analytics to improve student success and completion Data-informed decision making: Ensuring that business intelligence, reporting, and analytics are relevant, convenient, and used by administrators, faculty, and students Data management and governance: Improving the management of institutional data through data standards, integration, protection, and governance
Theme 3: Strategic Use of Data
Student success and completion: Effectively applying data and predictive analytics to improve student success and completion
Data-informed decision making: Ensuring that business intelligence, reporting, and analytics are relevant, convenient, and used by administrators, faculty, and students
Data management and governance: Improving the management of institutional data through data standards, integration, protection, and governance

15. Theme 3: Strategic Uses of Data
For the audience
Which is generally your institution’s approach to adopting new technologies?
Tend to adopt after our peers
Tend to adopt at the pace of our peers
Tend to be among the first of our peers to adopt
Gerard Au, California State University, San Bernardino Rebecca Frost-Davis, St. Edwards University Student success and completion: Effectively applying data and predictive analytics to improve student success and completion
2. Student success and completion: Effectively applying data and predictive analytics to improve student success and completion
Questions to ask the audience:
Gerard will take a visual poll of the audience--where do you fit
early,
middle,
late adopters? (ask them to stand or raise hands)
Optional: Where are you successful?
Optional: What type of predictive data are you using? Are you using historical student data, or current/live operational/machine data?
Optional: Who at your institute is driving these initiatives and where does IT fit in?
Questions Susan will ask:
What implications does this have for use of technology on campus/for IT and what challenges have you seen in this area?
Optional: What is perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of this issue?
Optional: Who outside the IT department should care most about this issue?
Optional: What are effective strategies . . .

16. Theme 3: Strategic Uses of Data
Gerard Au, California State University, San Bernardino Rebecca Frost Davis, St. Edward’s University Data-informed decision making: Ensuring that business intelligence, reporting, and analytics are relevant, convenient, and used by administrators, faculty, and students
For the audience
Who does this issue impact most?
Top administrators
Faculty
Staff
Questions to ask the audience:
Rebecca: Who does this issue impact most? (slide and show of hands)
Top administrators
Faculty
Staff
Optional: How would you grade your campus? Is this top-down or institution-wide?
Optional: What kind of resistance, push-back, or objections do you hear? Characterize the responses.
Questions Susan will ask:
What strategies have you used to engage various constituencies on campus in this kind of transformation, e.g., faculty, IT staff, other staff, etc.
Optional: What pressures does this put on IT?

17. Theme 3: Strategic Uses of Data
Gerard Au, California State University, San Bernardino Marden Paul, University of Toronto Data management and governance: Improving the management of institutional data through data standards, integration, protection, and governance
Questions to ask the audience:
Gerard: Have you ever heard anyone say they “don’t trust the data from the ERP/SIS/FIS” so they keep their own system of record?
Why does this question come up?
Optional: Does your institutional have a data classification standards manual?
Optional: What is your campus’ data governance structure look like now? Where should it be in the upcoming years?
Optional: Do you think people read/apply data classification standards manuals?
Optional: Is there an office devoted to data stewardship?Who is taking care of research-generated data?
Questions Susan will ask:
(Ask both): With “big data” becoming part of the vernacular, what should IT be doing to help manage expectations -- that we will be able to do predictive analytics on student success; that we can reduce operating costs; that research and innovation will flow forth from our data sets?
EDUCAUSE

18. Theme 4: Next-gen Enterprise IT
Gerard Au, California State University, San Bernardino John Landers, Case Western Reserve University Next-gen enterprise IT: Developing and implementing enterprise IT applications, architectures, and sourcing strategies to achieve agility, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and effective analytics
Questions to ask the audience:
(John) How have other institutions been able to be agile while trying to provide the support needed and get key initiatives complete?
-Gerard/John will expand on this
Questions Susan will ask:
(Ask Both) What processes or metrics are key as you work through developing and implementing enterprise IT applications?
EDUCAUSE

19. Theme 5: Digital Transformation of Learning
Rebecca Frost Davis, St. Edward’s University Marden Paul, University of Toronto Digital transformation of learning: Collaborating with faculty and academic leadership to apply technology to teaching and learning in ways that reflect innovations in pedagogy and the institutional mission
Questions to ask the audience:
Marden: Is there a plan to have a set of tools that are officially adopted by the institution (with room to add more and a practice for assessing and adopting new tools) (Or free for all?)
Optional: What types of resources are in place to introduce/support faculty in the adoption of new pedagogical styles/tools/approaches?
Optional: Does your institution have a dedicated tech teaching support group?
Optional: Are digital transformations happening at the local level or are there institutional initiatives in place?
Optional: Are there practices in place to do the privacy and security assessments, as well as financial viability and support capability assessments of vendors and tools that people want to adopt?
Optional: What are we going to do with all the data and IP that’s being collected by our new digital toolboxes? (not sure this is really a question -- more of a statement)
Questions Susan will ask:
(For both): What is perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of this issue?
How is this different from online teaching and learning? Full institutional transformation. Role in curriculum.
EDUCAUSE

20. Questions about the Top 10?
Information security: Developing a holistic, agile approach to reducing institutional exposure to information security threats
Student success and completion: Effectively applying data and predictive analytics to improve student success and completion
Data-informed decision making: Ensuring that business intelligence, reporting, and analytics are relevant, convenient, and used by administrators, faculty, and students
Strategic leadership: Repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as a strategic partner with institutional leadership
Sustainable funding: Developing IT funding models that sustain core services, support innovation, and facilitate growth
Data management and governance: Improving the management of institutional data through data standards, integration, protection, and governance
Higher education affordability: Prioritizing IT investments and resources in the context of increasing demand and limited resources
Sustainable staffing: Ensuring adequate staffing capacity and staff retention as budgets shrink or remain flat and as external competition grows
Next-gen enterprise IT: Developing and implementing enterprise IT applications, architectures, and sourcing strategies to achieve agility, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and effective analytics
Digital transformation of learning: Collaborating with faculty and academic leadership to apply technology to teaching and learning in ways that reflect innovations in pedagogy and the institutional mission

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