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Opinion
How IT Makes the Impossible Possible
9/6/2006
By Terry Calhoun
Information technology is so cool because, among other things, once it becomes an infrastructure for something, there are so many ways for that something to be better than it was before. Sometimes it isn’t even evident that it is in fact the existence of information technology than makes something possible when otherwise it would never have happened.
Here in my day job at the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), that’s happening again now. This time, it is the society’s ability to implement a nationwide survey regarding the status of crisis management and planning on college and university campuses. I’ll write more about that upcoming, important survey below.
We already conduct an annual survey of “space” on campuses – space detailed by kind of use: classroom, office, etc. The story of how we are able to do that is the story of how the IT infrastructure makes otherwise impossible things possible. In this case, it is through driving down the cost.
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The federal government used to collect data of that sort, but stopped doing so in 1992. As soon as it stopped, everyone on campus for whom this data is important – and it is important for many people – began complaining and suggesting that “someone” should collect and share the data. No one did.
Then, toward the end of that decade, a wonderful SCUP leader, John Byrd, began proposing that the Society for College and University Planning should collect and share the data.
The problem was that the survey he proposed came with a hefty price tag. This was mostly because it relied on snail mail, telephone calls, and so forth. It was a paper-based survey, so it also wasn’t “green.”
So, no one knew what to do with the proposal. Basically, everyone thought it was a great idea, but we couldn’t fund it. We even talked with other organizations about a collaborative effort, but there still wasn’t enough money available to make it happen.
Then some bright folks thought, “Hey, we can solicit data by e-mail, collect data via a Web form, and share it by downloads of spreadsheets.” So we spent a year developing the database and the surrounding communications, and now we have the successful SCUP Campus Facilities Inventory (CFI) on an annual cycle with the number of campuses contributing comparable data increasing by about a hundred institutions a year. Do the people who manage space on your campus contribute? Do me a favor and forward this column to them.
A few weeks ago, my boss attended an EDUCAUSE ECAR summit on college and university business continuity planning.
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