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Organizational Change: Model Citizens
10/3/2005
Truly visionary CIOs are now attacking IT reorganization on campus with all the zeal of corporate wunderkinds. Here are three, along with their strategic models. Take notes.
MOST ACADEMIC INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENTS, much like the technologies around which they are built, exist in a constant state of flux. As systems and networks and programs evolve, so too must CIOs transform their IT departments, growing and shrinking the superstructure to maximize efficiency and minimize expenditure. This is a difficult balancing act, one with which many colleges and universities struggle. Three schools, however—Louisiana State University, the University of Georgia, and Santa Clara University (CA)—seem to be especially good at getting things right. CIOs at these schools recently have mixed centralization and delegation to recreate IT departments that mirror corporate models for efficiency and commitment to excellence. The approaches are all different, but the result is the same: reorganized IT departments that are leaner, meaner, and better than ever before. Here are their stories.
All for One
In April, when Brian Voss arrived in his new position as CIO at Louisiana State University, he determined right away that the school’s IT department was in need of an extreme makeover. The department was being run by four different directors: The person in charge of user support also was in charge of machine room operations. The individual in charge of the data center was pretty much disconnected from everyone else. Team members managed responsibilities successfully, but there was no sense that individual functions belonged to part of a greater whole; no organizational dynamic. Privately, staffers joked that the administration’s job was to keep the wheels of IT on the road. Voss, an engineer with extensive experience in both the higher education and corporate IT worlds, saw his job differently.
“IT is an asset, not a necessary evil,” he says. “While once, all those here saw their responsibilities in IT as simply taking care of business, I wanted to help them navigate through the growth and strategic development necessary to get their wheels off the ground.”
Voss set out to accomplish his goals with a rigorous plan for centralization. First, he unveiled an overarching Office of the CIO, which assumed responsibility for operational IT functions over areas that included financial resources, human resources, communications, planning, security, and faculty and student relationships. He then developed this office for all of the functions that formerly fell by the wayside; missioncritical functions that frequently got overlooked in the rush to accomplish larger goals. Voss put all HR and financial resources under one deputy, and consolidated security and IT policy under another; in addition, he recruited and designated an individual to focus on IT planning. Voss is also working closely with LSU’s new vice chancellor to handle communications more holistically, and to help develop a means by which IT strategies are broadcast to a user base of 30,000 students and roughly 5,000 faculty and staff.
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