Strategic Technology

Findings from the JISC / Leadership Foundation Study
Current engagement of institutional strategies with the information technology agenda
Presented by Dr Andy Jordan of Duke & Jordan Ltd

Purpose of the study to identify the issues and development needs relating to the integration of technology into institutional strategies in UK HE. Examination of:
awareness; current practices; potential benefit

Want to incorporate feedback from today into the final report. Questions in breakout session have arisen out of the work we have done.

We approached 28 universities and asked via letter to the VC for names of roleholders and most of them said yes, some took an age to reply and a couple said no. Those that said no are those where we asked to talk to governors. Pledged confidentiality. Attempted to interview individuals from large bodies who were not HEIs but were less successful in getting agreement. Where we did, they gave a remarkably similar story of the processes in organisations outside HE sector.

We asked:
How does your institutional strategy development process work? How are any conflicts resolved?

How does technology currently contribute to delivering your institutional key strategic imperatives in teaching, learning and research, administration and other activities?
How does your institution know where and how technology can make a significant contribution to institutional strategy?
How would you improve what you do?

Got similar answers to the last question across the board.

One of the key findings was the role of technology.
It could be transformational ie radical change of the institution
A strategic enabler – strategy could not be achieved without technology
An operational enabler  technology used to deliver but not critical

Two basic models of the way in which strategy development happens within institutions: the integrated model and the disjoint model
[See model diagrams on slide]

In the disjoint model the corporate role stays the same but the technology part of it is different. We thought there would be examples of top down and bottom up processes but only came across one bottom up model. Top down appears to be the only way that people actually use.

The whole process is completely dislocated in one sense other than the fact that it takes place within a corporate strategy, although timescales may be different. Goes off in all kinds of different directions across the board with technology. An untidy model.

Five examples: 1 small HEI, 2 1992 HEIs, one pre-1992 HEI, one Russell Group

Example: institution A: has coherent long term vision and technology is at the core of the changes they are trying to implement across the institution. They have set up a set of roles within the institution to enable this to happen ad a set of three people who are technology literate – the deputy VC, an SMT member whose portfolio covers ICT and a person called a CIO but is not on the SMT. There is considerable autonomy within the schools so has to be consultation and advocacy. It is negotiate rather than compel. Have a separate IS strategy but for the last time as want a corporate strategy from the centre.

Example: Institution B: does not feel there is a need for a technology strategy/ Have adopted an enterprise architecture approach within institutional strategy and see it cascading down to technology. Have an open SMT. No specific IT skills within the SMT but involvement of several members in technology management.

Example Institution C: small, vocationally focused institution. See technology as a strategic enabler. Use the integrated model. Technology is part of what they are doing. CEO and deputy CEO technology literate. Consultation was around how rather than what. Innovation and partnership in technology is a key element in their measurement of success.

Example: Institution D: has a vision and top level strategy developed by the SMT but have a rolling approach to dealing with functional areas of strategy. Roughly one area of strategy updated annually. It is a disjoint model in terms of how it gets wrapped into the corporate strategy. One strategy component is devoted to ICT.

Example: Institution E: very long corporate strategy -  10 year cycle, very broad aims. Separate functional strategies, overlapping time cycles. Autonomy in schools. IT strategy is a governance strategy: sets framework and boundaries.

Issues – 1 – success

We asked about success and most people replied that they think it works reasonably well, were fairly happy with what they did. Wasn’t always straightforward but by and large people were happy. Trying to identify good practice but found that one model does not fit all and what suits a large institution may not suit a smaller institution.

Issues – 2

Two models of universities – federal and unitary – variants of disjoint are the most common

issues – 3 - the role of technology
The norm was to see it as an operational enabler. Very few saw it as transformational.

Issues – 4 – the role of the head of ICT

Four key areas: operation; strategy; customer support; influencing

Traditionally. the comfort zone is in operations. The hard part is the influencing. The CIO territory is influencing and CTO territory is more towards operations. Question of language and whether people were using the right or the same language came up again and again. Remains a factor even today.

Issues – 5
Where does the head of ICT sit in the hierarchy?
By and large they were only one step below the SMT but distinct difference in way that they perceived themselves. This was the major issue seen as needing improvement – the head of the tech function should function at a board level.

Issues – 6
The skills/characteristics of the head of ICT / CTO / CIO: frequently from outside the sector in the latter case

What is good practice?
Clear that most institutions have thought about where ICT fits
Not clear that all SMTs are in a position to understand what technology can/cannot deliver
But – if you’re not using the tools to hand then denying yourself opportunities

Our recent work on shared services for the JISC found that HEIs must deal with globalisation of HE and the economic downturn and so they need to be lean and agile and technology is critical to both of these.

To improve good practice:
SMTs should be technology literate
Technology should at least be a strategic enabler (cannot achieve this without integrated strategy development)
UK HEIs should develop: their own CIOs and technology staff who are business focused

Draw attention to Dearing Recommendation 42: HEIs should develop managers with a deep understanding of ICT

Q+A

Mike Roch: Andy, you talked about how most institutions are content with their processes. Did you look for any kind of performance indicator or outside verification?

Andy: yes, they would say that. But the confidentiality issue is helpful to us and do have to say that many of the institutions had changed their processes quite recently and believe that what they now have will work well. Didn’t look for alternative criteria.

Jon: we did look for the SMT possessing the ability to be able to explore potential and when we spoke to SMT people I generally felt that the levels of imagination were not what they could have been in some cases. They needed someone they could be provoked by – someone to talk about web 2.0 and describe ways it could enhance the student experience. For large corporate system planning, I got the impression that things probably were pretty adequate.

Bob: when we spoke to people and asked if they were satisfied they were not universally but we wanted to know if they had a set of processes that seemed to work and would be replicable. We did attempt to try to map what people said on to the processes they described. Difficult to avoid the big watershed developments, such as the internet or VLEs – key strategic drivers hit you and then you respond to them. A lot of questions but wasn’t just a pat on the back type conversation.

Ted: can you comment on who the intended audience for the report is and how you intend to reach them

Andy: Leadership Foundation and the JISC. First piece of work being done under those auspices. It will have recommendations about what they should be doing. That is the key audience. Hope that it will be of interest to SMTs and HEIs but they are not the target

Ted: how far did you see or not see technology as being transformational

Andy: virtually nobody is using it as that. SMT do not see it in those terms.

Delegate: reductionism in terminology – are you losing some of the richness of what is going on? Does it affect the conclusions?

Andy: a good question… we did use the word ICT…I don’t think that the word knowledge management came up at all in our interviews and that’s the sort of thing we were allowing people to range across if they wanted to. I don’t think we were losing a huge amount by the terminology we were using.

Delegate: we shouldn’t be surprised that ICT as a strategy is not integrated as there is a lot of disjoint between the learning and estate and ICT strategies and one question is which is the boss strategy and I think we’re all searching for this. ICT covers such a huge array of what an institution does. I think we’re struggling with how we cover that whole breadth of everything we’re asking the inst to do in relation to ICT and whether just one role can do that.

Andy: you’re right – different kinds of inst have different kinds of approaches. Some will have such a high level vision that the role of ICT in it is insignificant. Others are trying to keep themselves on the ladder. One model does not fit all.