Looking Backward Looks Like Looking Forward - to 2004!
I know, I know, everyone else is writing predictions about what's going to
happen in 2004, or even in 2007. So, just to be contrary I decided to take a
look at the top higher ed/news story generators in 2003, based on our weekly
scan of what's being written in the higher ed and general news media about IT
issues at colleges and universities.
Guess what? The more I look at last year's stories, the more I see the same
stories - or at least the same story categories - we'll be reading in 2004.
Here's a backwards/forwards look at the top higher education information technology
stories, as defined by media coverage in 2003, followed by a toast and a wish
that the bad news stays away from you in 2004!
Bugs
This story had legs, and the ripple effect continued from late August through
the end of 2003. Students returned to campus and brought with them their computers
and viruses and worms - and we had to fix things for them. It was a customer
relations nightmare and it was tons of extra work hours for IT staff as we worked
to educate the users, fix their machines, and manage the effects of their infections
on our networks and our data. We learned a lot, but there will be new bugs to
test what we've learned in 2004, and very likely new vectors.
The Buyout
After years of coping with PeopleSoft implementation and with many campuses
having their eggs in the PeopleSoft basket, higher education IT managers (and
budget officers) were alarmed when Oracle made its bid to acquire PeopleSoft.
It wasn't quite the full "Chicken Little" reaction, although in some
ways such a reaction was deserved. However, we're all tip-t'eing into 2004 as
we hope that government agencies and stockholders might yet put the kibosh on
this merger.
Wireless
As Kenneth C. Green recently put it, with more and more students coming onto
campus in 2003 from homes where they already had their own wireless networking,
and with wireless showing up at gas stations in the Midwest, many institutions
decided to opt "for a 'just do it strategy,' focused on deployment first,
followed by planning." I bet that this is a trend that will continue to
increase in 2004, with more universities and colleges following the Case Western
Reserve model and being collaborative regional wireless hubs.
Spam
Following some kind of perverse Moore's Law, everyone's spam intake increased
in 2003. No one disagrees now that it's a problem. But how to handle it? We
implemented client spam filters, server-side spam filters, network spam filters,
states and the federal government passed legislation. North Carolina even went
out of state to arrest spammers. Yet the low cost to spammers of sending spam,
combined with the interest of many large companies (and Congress) to allow what
some call spam but what they want to send to us anyway, kept the problem insoluble.
P2P and Legalities
The Recording Industry Artists of America got tough. Although many see P2P as
the last gasps of a dinosaur music industry, students got sued and taken to
court, and institutions got subp'enaed, Napster came back to life with a special
deal at Penn State, and the top court in Canada decided that it was legal there
to download MP3s, just not to serve them up.
Various methods (Napster included)
for making music downloads available for a reasonable price were flown as trial
balloons. The upshot is that no one really knows where we are, legally or technologically.
Will the Nittany Napster deal please students? Will iPod recover from its non-replaceable
battery issues? What creative things will the RIAA show us in 2004? I think
we'll see some of the same policy issues getting more scrutiny in non-musical
areas.
Open Source
Open source - the various software programs and the idea - gained broader acceptance
in 2003, with the rise in popularity of Linux being a major part of the deal,
and with Red Hat and others offering special licenses. With broader acceptance,
though, came a closer look at the true pros and cons. Look for institutions
to be clearer in their statements about what their choices are with enterprise
solutions in 2004 and for a little more diversity in operating systems on campus
as a result.
Financial Crisis
In the third year of the financial downturn in the US economy, higher education
budgets were getting chopped right and left. Luckily, presidents and provosts
still understand the priority that information technology has within higher
education. That, plus the growing pressure for more IT amenities from "customers"
has kept IT budgets in relatively good shape. Look for impacts on IT budgets
to vary more from state to state in 2004, especially as public institutions
in the harder hit states, get hit even harder. We may yet feel the negative
impact of this in IT departments.
Student/Customer/Consumer Expectations
This was the year of freshmen who were expecting everything. It's amazing how
fast their demands stopped when midterms and then finals hit! But the tsunami
of student expectations will continue, fueled by the incredible sales of info
tech items during the holiday season. Expect even greater challenges this year
- increasingly from the repercussions of the technology they bring with them
on campus which exceeds our administrative procedures and policies. There'll
be students showing up in class this year with their own data projectors!
Not Quite Getting It Right
Upgrades to library systems that left out data, wireless network extension initiatives
that found asbestos, hackers getting into academic information systems and changing
grades, changes to Web-based email systems that created incompatibilities with
student computers . . . all of these are the typical stories that come from
times when we find out we didn't plan quite carefully enough for a change or
an upgrade. When you consider how much gets done right, the first time, it's
amazing how few of these stories we have to read about.
A Toast!
Here's hoping that all of you read no such "problem" stories about
your own campus in 2004, and that whatever your choice of enterprise software
path was, you stick to that path and prove it to have been the right path. For
2004 I wish that for you that your endowments hold and that the budget cuts
stay away (and so d'es the RIAA). May your wireless be ubiquitous and may the
PeopleSoft buyout die a quiet death. May your antivirus systems be current,
your firewalls strong, and your users intelligent and educated - and here's
hoping that a few more spammers go to jail in 2004!