C-Level View | Feature
The Annual Report: Ringing in the Changes
A Q&A with Doug Foster
This time of year, people like to reflect on their priorities. Some make New Year's resolutions. It occurred to us that many of our academic institutions do something similar with an annual report. CT spoke with Doug Foster, vice president for information technology and CIO at the University of South Carolina's Division of Information Technology, to find out how an annual report can help the institution's resolve by putting goals and accomplishments in context.
Mary Grush: The annual report for the Division of Information Technology for FY 19-20 allows you to reflect on the division's work for the year. How does this document help the institution's resolve?
Doug Foster: The annual report is actually part of a larger alignment strategy. We have strategic priorities at the university level; and we have strategic priorities for the IT division. In IT, we put together an annual plan every year, which is what we execute our work against, and, finally, we put out an annual report.
The annual report is the end of the chain, if you will. So, for example, we can show that from the university's strategic priorities a given strategic priority has emerged in IT. We can say: "Here is IT's response to this; here is the action that we are taking to further this; and here is our report that describes how we did what we said we were going to do."
The annual report makes a valuable linkage from our daily activities, back to the institution's strategic priorities that we are trying to further. The way this helps our institution's resolve is that the annual report links our work to strategic priorities, and so it provides the "why" of all the projects we are doing.
The annual report makes a valuable linkage from our daily activities, back to the institution's strategic priorities that we are trying to further.
Grush: Who is the annual report written for? Are you able to generalize or maybe even simplify for a wider readership?
Foster: We've been talking to our constituents consistently, via many different types of communications throughout the year — in virtually all cases, this is not the first time they have heard of our initiatives. They know the landscape. But the annual report, on the surface, is very simple in its description of what we've done — it can be and is understood by a much wider audience. Still, the major value and depth of the report is in the linkage of these seemingly simple components back to the strategic plan.
Grush: Do you distribute the annual report to potentially all different members of the university community? And who within IT works to produce the report?
Foster: As for distribution, the annual report gets out in many different formats and platforms (e-mail, websites, social media postings, hard copy) and forums (local governance groups, university departments, external partners).
Within IT, we have an organizational change management group that is the main mechanism for producing the report, working with communications staff, graphic designers, and content experts and contributors.
Grush: Are you able, or is it your goal, to present useful metrics or descriptions of progress toward goals?
Foster: The way that we do this is to evaluate our own work using the metrics associated with the university's strategic plan. While we are developing our annual plan within IT, we are having our own discussions to answer: "How will our projects within IT impact our division's strategic priorities and the university's strategic priorities?"
How will our projects within IT impact our division's strategic priorities and the university's strategic priorities?
The metrics are really encapsulated in the strategic plans, and in our annual planning process. By the time we get to the annual report, it's really more a matter of reporting on what was accomplished or completed rather than on providing detailed metrics.
Grush: What happens in the case of shifting priorities? For example, you talk about the necessary responses to the unforeseen COVID-19 pandemic in your most recent annual report.
Foster: A colleague used to say to me, "There are only two kinds of plans: wrong and really wrong." We know, going in, when we put the annual plan together, that it will likely not represent the entire body of work for the year — things happen. When we put out an annual report we include major, unplanned work. COVID-19 is a great example. Another example is when a department adds a new program in the middle of the year, and we have to support them. Or, a new regulation comes down and we have to make a significant system change to comply.
Grush: Can the experience of adapting to change help build an agile staff and cement relationships with your constituents? Can you show this in the annual report?
Foster: Yes, and yes. Recognition in the annual report helps build confidence in our own staff and trust from our constituents.
All this shows our ability to adapt, move, and respond in real time. These experiences are also useful in learning to discuss our capacity — understanding how much change we can manage at any moment.
Grush: Is the annual report of value as a long-term record for the institution?
Foster: Absolutely. I call this an IT retrospective. The multiple year view can show us patterns that we might not notice in the history of the current year. One potentially amazing thing that might pop out of that is the observation of an increase in organizational capacity and speed. At many institutions, including at ours, the COVID-19 response was remarkable. Other trends are more subtile, but none the less impressive given the long view.
The IT retrospective makes you consider an important question about responding to change: "Can we get more done now than we've been able to before?" And most importantly: "Why?" The retrospective annual reports, taken together, provide a guide that helps us reflect upon our organizational capacity and capabilities. It's critically important to formalize this as a valuable resource.
The retrospective annual reports, taken together, provide a guide that helps us reflect upon our organizational capacity and capabilities.
Grush: Can the annual report be useful in showing fiscal accountability, negotiating investment in the division's initiatives, and influencing change?
Foster: I think that business analysts would say that past performance is not necessarily an indicator of future performance. But, our ability to communicate to our constituents: "We said this is what we were going to do; we told you that this was the value that it was going to create; and we did it" is really useful. A lot of discussions about investment in IT at higher education institutions can be summed up as: "Yeah, but can you actually pull that off?" Our alignment cycle, over the past four years since we've been doing this has really eliminated that question, because we've proven that if we put it on the table, it's going to get done.
Again, an annual report, standing by itself, is not necessarily going to bring you this type of credibility. But our process of alignment with strategic priorities is the secret sauce that works toward building the kind of trust that I've been talking about here.
Over time, it's a powerful enabler, and a great way to ring in the changes.
[Editor's note: The University of South Carolina Division of Information Technology's Annual Report for FY 19-20 can be viewed online here.]
