Organizing and Managing
Information Resources on Your
Campus
Polley Ann McClure, Editor
The Ecosystem of IT
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Decentralized structure
Financial architecture
History
Growth of IT
Cost Management
Convergence of technologies
Decentralized Structure
• Clark Kerr (1980) “Taking, as a starting point,
1530, when the Lutheran Church was founded,
some 66 institutions that existed then still exist
today in the Western World in recognizable
form: the Catholic Church, the Lutheran
Church, the parliaments of Iceland and the Isle
of Man, and 62 universities….They have
experienced wars, revolutions, depressions, and
industrial transformations, and have come out
less changed than almost any other segment of
their societies.”
Financial Architecture
• Responsibility centers (tubs on own
bottoms)
• Centrally planned (“library model”)
History
• IT organization’s relationship with
institution in the past
• Personalities of stakeholders
• Periodic “purges”
Ontogeny of IT Function
• Growth in computing power
• Who uses it?
• Pervasiveness
Computer Power Growth
Big Computer
Year
Model
MIPS
1956
IBM 650
0.001
1967
IBM 360/65
0.68
1974
1983
1986
1990
1995
1997
1999
IBM 370/168
IBM 3081-K
IBM 3090-200
IBM 2090-200J
IBM390 : 9672-R32
IBM 390: 9672-R24
IBM 390: 9672-R25
2.3
13.5
28
45
58
88
117
Personal Computers
Number
MIPS/CPU
Total MIPS
Total MIPS
% PC
100
500
5,000
15,000
20,000
22,000
25,000
.64
.64
2
8
30
210
350
.64
320
10,000
120,000
600,000
4,620,000
8,750,000
66
333.5
10,028
120,045
600,058
4,620,088
8,750,117
96
96
99+
99+
99+
99+
99+
Cost Management
Convergence of Technologies
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Academic Computing
Administrative Computing
Telephone Services
Network Services
Local Networks
Audio-Visual Centers
Etc.
Elements of IT Function & Tools
Services
People
Technology
Money
Organizing Information
Resources for Effective
Management (Neal & McClure)
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Establish locus of institutional responsibility
Define relationships to other parts
Define university-wide structure
Design for graceful evolution
The “right” people
Fit with structure and culture of institution
Use common sense
A Common Model
• Major parts of central IT functionally organized
(Customer service, Applications, Systems,
Operations, Communications, Security, Internal
Support)
• Overlay of project management organization
• Distributed units are unit-focused
• (Be sure to make it someone’s job to coordinate
central and distributed!)
Getting Beyond Budget Dust to
Sustainable Models for Funding
IT (Smallen & McCredie)
• Design principles
• Models
• Six sure ways to fail
Design Principles
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Align IT resources with institutional priorities
Integrate IT with management culture
Promote efficient use of institutional resources
Support institutional IT standards
Promote effective management of IT resources
Facilitate generation of additional resources
Ensure reasonable transaction cost for funding
mechanism
• Build fair and equitable funding process
Funding Models
• Centrally funded (“free” to end user)
• Chargeback (usage-based fees)
• Tax-based funding
Six Sure Ways to Fail
• Start long term projects without funding
• Focus on implementation and neglect
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ongoing expenses
Start to charge for a service that was once
free
Use secretive top-down planning approach
Neglect to test funding assumptions
Be inflexible
IT Manager as Gardener
• Planting, nurturing, weeding, feeding
• New challenge: harvesting the benefits