Strategic Technology

1. Which is the biggest challenge in making something like the Cardiff experience happen in your institution?

2. Given the fast changing nature of IT how do you maintain the impetus when the strategy is transformational?

Table A

1. Which is the biggest challenge in making something like the Cardiff experience happen in your institution?

• Culture; bringing along the senior members of the institution, recognising the potential for technology to deliver on strategy. Major change must be led from the top. Choose who conveys the message, often it’s the dean’s who are more effective.
• Federated organisational model; challenge to convince the business units and centre to function effectively … similarities with the industry model.
• Leadership do not necessarily understand potential of technology.
• Communication; articulating what you want to do and ensuring that your team are ambassadors for technology … using empathy and understanding across the functions of the institutions.
• Incorrect assumptions; current barriers that private sector has it right, therefore someone from the ‘outside’ has enhanced credibility.
• Making a difference within a financial constrained environment; having less money can actually help focus the mind.

2. Given the fast changing nature of IT how do you maintain the impetus when the strategy is transformational?

• Get the basics right, whilst you’re doing this and scanning the horizon.
• Remember your key audience are pretty young and exploratory.
• Recognise when things are a commodity and when it’s innovation.
• Working in partnership, you can’t do everything and share.
• Dealing with conflict, ensure there’s a gatekeeper (within the directorate for L&T and R) who manages the situation / makes the decisions when there’s an technology related (or other) innovation which conflicts or diverges with institutional strategy.
• There’s no choice … we must be flexible.

Table B

• Some institutions don’t have a CIO post, so who performs this role?
• different ICT ‘units’ (library, MIS etc) can report to different PVCs
• can still have that role within an institution, even if there is not a converged ICT / library service.
• need to understand information as lifeblood of the organisation.

• Is the CIO a provider of service or contributor to strategic goal?
• Students see ICT as a service.
• Some institutions retaining old titles (such as PVC, deans etc), have a tendency to stick with old working practices with relations between ICT and institutional management.
• CIO implies Board responsibility (less close to tech, more to strategy)
• otherwise will tend to report in under a particular line (and under their view of ICT).
• Without a CIO, need to promote the role of ICT within all areas of management.
• Is possible to “get by” if Director of ICT briefs board member but how long will that situation be enough?
• Solutions broker – integration; use of services from elsewhere; not just manage in-house
• Need better agility
• ICT to save time – add value to help people do their jobs easier
• CIO role is to deliver strategy through managed risk, not protecting position

Table C

• Perception of administration is essentially operational
• Lack of VC commitment to strategic role of IT – often supported in principle, less so in practice
• Need to approach the change through more subtle methods, from below
• Identification of win-win situations
• Getting the basics right: avoid unnecessary expense: perceived high cost of every changing technology
• Departments tend to be inward looking. It is no exception there: silo approaches within HEIs
• Need tenacity to drive the agenda of strategic IT
• Magnitude of challenge can be daunting
• Need, in addition to a larger group, a small strategy group: the way IT departments are structured: the portfolio of the CIO.

Table D

• Changing behaviour of colleagues and ourselves. Engenders different response from colleagues. Difficulty is that IT is still thought of as “bricks & mortar”; lack of representation at Board/Cabinet.
• If you’re at “excellence” but can’t get beyond that; no representation at Board - how do you get there?
• Interested in V-C as a hero! It matters to him, his success matters to us
• What are CU’s lessons learnt - the toolkit; IT has a step-change role within an institution - if it’s devolved out, out of control bring a CIO in, solve problem, then back to status quo.
• Tension with librarians, bring the two together under a CIO.
• Is it important that the CEO gets it? Actually it’s the strategic thing, the value-add
• Can you afford it if you’re not-Russell Group - probably not? Build upon good demonstrator?
• Transforming behaviour, making people feel they’re at the centre of the university not just technie-whizzo. Sharing importance and success of the institution.
• HR partnership valuable where it is supportive of change. You can be an exemplar of good practice in HR that can then be shared with others.
• The strategic imperative is the most important thing, transformational agenda is owned by all, willingness to change culture.

Table E

o Most IT director one remove from Board as most report to PVC’s
o So problems are exacerbated by being one layer down
o Question - does this sort of change require direct access to Board?
o Is it sufficient to lead just the IT responsibility or do you also need a converged service?
o Cardiff Board is quite large and so there is more cross awareness of a wide spectrum of issue – not often the case
o Where not direct Board representation there is sometimes a problem of continuity of contact with VC etc regarding IT issues
o Also problems of information flow from Board down to IT senior levels – therefore a disconnect
o Also wide spread issue about IT directors not personally up-skilling sufficiently to deal with wider Board level debates
o Need to develop personal skills necessary for being on the Board but with out necessarily the role
o Also a challenge of how to build a strong business case of the benefits of embarking on this whole process
o Also often historical issues of lack of trust in IT for wider role
o May also be beneficial to talk more about the benefits of IT rather than its outputs - benefits realisation
o But this all needs to be built on delivering the IT basics without which will never move to the next level discussions – need to build the trust
o Often a problem with Deans etc who might be seen as ‘disrupting’ the IT system – maybe need to engage some of these people to champion pioneering projects
o So partnering others is a way to keep impetus going under transformational driver

Table G

• Martyn Harrow’s role separate from Computing Department – much wider span, not really to do with IT in traditional sense
• CEO has say in who CIO is – critical relationship
• Very different type of role for universities
• Relatively immature function supporting ancient traditional enterprises/disciplines
• Need ‘back room people’ but also need interface – type people to translate needs/ requirements of business
• Relationship management
• Needs to come from within IT – otherwise hard to survive. Some people can adjust but others find it really challenging.
• Career issue if people in ITG cannot relate to others in understandable way – career routes?
• Rare – people with high level skills and ability to communicate
• Industry doesn’t breed too many leaders/senior managers
• IT – more a commodity, doesn’t need the highest level of technical skills as in the past.
• New roles not consistent with where they have come from.
• How many Universities in UK have CIOs?
• Converged services –quite common but often library is ‘senior’ role rather than IT/IS.
• Investment in soft skills for ‘deeply embedded’ IT personnel – worth it?
• Yes – skill set must change as they have to work with external people eg. suppliers etc. and relate to needs of stakeholders.
• Academic community now referring to ‘business’, ‘production lines’ and services to support it/them so attitudes are changing.
• Going out and finding out what wishes/needs of academic community – then distill, manage and sometimes say no.
• Needs direction/support from senior team
• Who is bearing costs of central services?
• What difference does the relative contribution to central services of the facilities mean – if anything?

Table H

Three challenges considered:
(i) CEO & support from the top – two cultures – either CEO on board or not – question raised whether the personal background of the CEO influenced level of engagement eg STEM v social sciences, arts and humanities
(ii) Importance of customer and staff demand as bottom-up drivers
(iii) Devolved / distributed / collegiate culture – Schools used to making own decisions and acting independently

Group identified a number of opportunities to start facilitating engagement and change:

• Central role for driving forward the sharing of good practice across the institution – especially important in a devolved model
• Get involved at early stage especially where new requirement may span departmental boundaries
• Identify the levers you can use to drive agreed strategy eg funding, 24/7 services, excellent services, invest in quick wins & demonstrate achievement
• Identify specifics for persuading so many people across university to ‘buy-in’ to whole organization IT strategy – eg ‘selling benefits’ relevant to different groups / individuals; develop soft skills; develop interface layer eg Business Analysts to identify and confirm requirements and business processes; spend time on building relationships

Given the fast changing nature of IT how do you maintain the impetus when the strategy is transformatio

• Change in technology may be less of an issue than previously given commoditization, and growing focus on defining service requirements, business processes & functional requirements. But upgrades etc take much resource & time
• Challenge for staff and institution of keeping up with what students have & expect.
• Top concerns that strategy might focus on: Financial sustainability; Impact of RAE outcome

Table I

Confidence is an important element, having a real confidence in doing something with what you already have (‘Excellence Today’) before you can propose the need for more resource. One of the biggest challenges is getting today’s IT right, to generate confidence in the IT people. But if you ask people across the institution what they want from IT, they don’t necessarily know. It’s the job of senior IT people to translate need into solution. We’re working in competing cultures, there’s a lot of difference, different needs and approaches to meeting needs. Again it’s a matter of confidence; understanding what might emerge when you open cans of worms, and having the confidence to deal with that.

Working in partnership is another key strand, helping people understand what can be delivered, what the options and opportunities are. But promising that you can deliver everything – and then not being able to – is a big risk.

IT-literate people need to have the confidence of their expertise and be able to spot opportunities, what and where technology can deliver solutions, accelerate change.

Devolution of responsibility for IT is very common particularly in small, specialist colleges, but in other institutions too. But teamwork and relationship building are key, more important than specific organisational structures and formal lines of authority.

There are still issues in identifying in some places who is responsible, who is leading technology at strategic levels.

Visibility is another important factor, and finding ways to communicate and gain credit for successes (when a measure of success is seamless change). Identifying return on investment, measuring that, can be difficult. Links to – and being driven by – over-arching strategic goals can make all the difference.

It can be a pain that IT moves so quickly, but in a sense the power of IT is the rate of change, given what you can deliver now compared to what you could deliver in the 1970s. One of the challenges is in deciding when you can skip a generation in technology terms; persuading senior teams to take a risk on what is relatively unknown. You have to have the courage to leap-frog generations occasionally and that can be lonely, no exemplars to follow. IT is already high on the institution’s risk agenda, those risks rise if you jump a generation.

Pathfinding is important; need for a team of people who aren’t focussed on today, but are connected to the roadmaps for the future.

In HE we might be in a position fairly soon where we stop providing all the services we’re offering now. But we need to be mindful of the range of student expectations – the younger generation might come into the institution already IT literate, with technology fully embedded in their social and educational experience, but more mature students are still a big part of many of our institutions’ users.

The key thing is to concentrate on where the institution wants to be, and then take from what technology is available to help meet those goals.

Have to realise that technology is an investment, an enabler, not just a cost, and that there are bigger questions which are much harder to address, what the core business of an institution really is.