The list of desired credentials looked pretty good. I'm glad to see that PAC didn't construe CIO to mean techie-in-chief, but rather saw the post in terms of leadership, planning, collaboration, and user service.
Let's have an open meeting next week to discuss two issues:
- The interim CIO position: Do we have any input to give the VPs to help them screen applicants?
- Localized faculty/staff tech support: What structure(s) would best provide the advantages of centralization and decentralization?
I'll try to find a place to meet Wednesday at 10:30, if anything is open then. Would a second time be useful, too?
Interim Chief Information Officer
The University of West Georgia invites applications for the position of Interim Chief Information Officer (CIO). The University seeks a leader who has significant experience in IT and the skills to achieve goals as outlined by the President and senior administration. The successful CIO will support the existing IT operation, and develop managers and staff to meet goals and continue a history of strong customer service.
Responsibilities:
The CIO will report directly to the President and have access to the President’s Advisory Committee. The overall leadership and general administrative responsibilities for the University of West Georgia’s IT organization including academic and administrative computing, telecommunications (telephone, distance learning, and cable technologies), data administration, network infrastructure, web development, software and instructional technology support, and system support services. The CIO provides leadership in the development and monitoring of an IT plan and fosters a culture that is collaborative and user oriented.
Qualifications:
An earned Bachelors Degree from an accredited institution is required, a Masters Degree or higher is preferred. Other preferred credentials include:
§ Abilities in the planning, development and implementation of IT goals for administrative functions of a complex organization.
§ Ability to identify and communicate a vision and mission for IT aligned with university priorities.
§ Experience in program evaluation, curriculum development, and assessment of educational outcomes and knowledge of alternative approaches in advancing academic excellence.
§ Ability to build teams among IT staff.
§ Ability to work with and provide support and leadership for multiple constituencies including faculty, students, staff and users external to the University as needed.
§ Commitment to diversity and an understanding of the links between campus diversity and academic excellence.
§ Experience with strategic and tactical planning, problem solving and crisis management.
§ Budget development and management abilities.
§ Familiarity with security issues, IT policy development, legal issues regarding technology, and business continuity.
§ Ability and willingness to communicate openly.
§ Capacity to maintain currency regarding IT policies, issues and trends; ability to comprehend, interpret and effectively communicate complex technical information.
Application Deadline: November 27, 2007
6 comments:
"The successful CIO will support the existing IT operation, and develop managers and staff to meet goals and continue a history of strong customer service."
I think this raises the largest questions of all in terms of where we go from here.
1: Does this mean that the interim CIO will be an integral part of the reorganization?
2: Will the interim CIO scrap everything done so far in favor of their own ideas and concepts or will they work in conjunction with the UTO to refine and solidify the proposed model?
3: What is our timetable for hiring or naming an interim CIO?
And a question that comes to my mind after considering the first three questions...
4: Why hire an interim CIO when we're just going to turn around and create a national search later on? It would seem that we're hiring the position twice and it also seems that we already have someone in place who is acting in a CIO capacity. In fact, we have two who could be considered CIO's right now, interim or otherwise. If these two people (and you know who you are guys) could put aside their differences and work together we could accomplish this reorganization without having to go through the process of interviewing and hiring an interim CIO.
Don't get me wrong. I think a CIO is an important part of the structure of IT and I am in support of it. I just think we need to go ahead and open up the national search (giving consideration to internal applicants as well) now while we are working through the reorganization with the people we have in place. That would seem to me to be the most effective use of our time and efforts.
-Mike Pearson
Dr. Llyod,
I have attended several of your open meetings. At one of them I asked the questions 1) will your final IT reorganization plan submitted to the president include IT staff and their new jobs? 2) How/who will determine where current IT staff will fit in this plan? Your answers were vague and unclear.
I’m hoping that since you are further along in the IT reorganization process you can now answer these questions with clarity.
Will wrote: "The interim CIO position: Do we have any input to give the VPs to help them screen applicants?"
1. Is it still standard expectations that the Interim CIO can not be an applicant for the permanent position?
2. Should all current employees who will be in the umbrella of this new organization be excluded as applicants? It just seems to me that this would reduce competition and possible hard feelings between people who need to work together.
3. To me, the biggest challenge of an Interim CIO is not reorganizing people but changing or setting up the budget(s) to support this new organization. A sly fox to take some eggs from the separate hen houses. ;-)
Did you notice the requirements do not specify a computer science degree or even a technical degree for the "interim" CIO?
Also, is the interim CIO disallowed from being a candidate for the permanent position?
Sounds like the scenario that was put forth by another poster earlier, where the interim is appointed and then just stays in the job after a period of time seems likely.
Hear I will try to describe an organizational plan for decentralized user support in a centralized IT environment. It revolves around the idea that the people who provide direct user support on a day-to-day basis have an assigned area and or group of people for which they are responsible and that they have an office or assigned space near those they support. This can be accomplished in several ways but I envision a combination of “part time” and “full time” support personnel. There are departments and buildings that obviously require one or more “full time” IT personnel to meet their needs such as the TLC building and the Library. There are others that do not; the wonderful ladies who reside in the Bonner House come to mind.
A definition of terms would now be appropriate. A “full time” IT person does nothing but IT related tasks and a “part time” IT person has other duties which may or may not take precedence over IT related tasks. I also need to bring up and define the concepts of “Functional” and “Administrative” supervision or management. Functional management includes all duties and activities related to IT and administrative management encompasses all other areas of supervision.
Functional management and support would be provided by the centralized IT staff. Functional management includes such things as inventory control, parts ordering, and higher tier technical support. Someone inside central IT would be the “Functional Manger” for the distributed support personnel and should be a part of or an adjunct to the Service/Help desk. This position would manage things like manpower short falls due to sickness, vacation, and short term project needs.
Administrative management would come into play for those individuals classified as “part time”. These “part time” IT support personnel would have other duties in the department and administrative support for these tasks would be provided by the local department. Negotiated up front and most likely based on the percentage of IT related work and its precedence, the “part time” IT person may actually “belong” to the department in which they work. Functional management and support would continue to be provided by the centralized IT as described above.
I had first hand experience with user support organized in this fashion while was in the USAF. Now I understand completely that a University is different from a military command but you would be surprised by the commonalities. This method of decentralizing the user support function while maintaining centralized jurisdiction works marvelously well as long as the roles and responsibilities of the players is spelled out up front. Everybody understands that “their” IT person might be temporarily reassigned to help roll out a new lab somewhere else but they also understand that they will be assigned extra help when they need it. I’ve seen it work. I know it will work.
Will wrote: "The interim CIO position: Do we have any input to give the VPs to help them screen applicants?"
The November 19th 2007 issue of the magazine InformationWeek (http://informationweek.com/) was recently posted which has articles about The Evolving CIO. It may not have any earth shattering news/advice, but it has references to some interesting surveys (e.g. from a recent survey, 46% of CIOs report to the CEO, 24% report to CFO, and 22% report to COO with the trend being that CIOs are reporting less and less to CEOs) as well as some interesting thoughts (e.g. CIOs need to exercise influence rather than control, CIOs need to embrace innovation rather than fighting new ideas or just being an order taker, CIOs must lead in business-process transformation and optimization as opposed to just being a technology manager, and CIOs have to be more involved in strategies rather than tactics). Most every IT person is putting forth effort and desire, but recognizing who has the proper skills and knows how to apply those skills to the jobs needed are the challenges. A CIO must understand who the CEO listens to and then make relationships with those people.
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