Dale Driver has created an interesting graphic depicting how the IT organization could be guided by other University entities:
Two related questions:
Thinking about the interactions among IT and its stakeholders raises two questions:
1. How can IT assure users that they will get good service?
- SLAs are part of the answer, but not a complete one.
- With local control of "their own" user support techies, units believe that they can guarantee good service.
- The flip side is that this same local control can be an obstacle to following best practices, being efficient, and even being as effective as we'd like.
2. How can we get the virtues of both local and centralized accountability?
- When I met with RCOB this week, people suggested matrix and federated management models.
- Those seem promising, but we'd need to think through the devilish details, like these:
- How would primary and secondary reporting lines work together?
- What kinds of articulation agreements would work in these situation?
- What structures would support management interaction?
- How would conflicts be resolved?
- Exactly what responsibilities would be assigned to each group?
6 comments:
The academic IT department heads didn't necessarily report to anyone who was knowledgeable about IT. When a director reports to a dean, it is easy for them to fleece the dean. with no greater accountability, they are allowed to focus on anything they want, and while it may be under the best of intentions, it may not always be within their job responsibilities. So there was no incentive to work with their cross campus counterparts, no checks and balances. I believe that the localized IT needs to report to both their client (college, unit) and the CIO. Being able to balance those two will quickly separate the wheat from the chaf.
This seems like as good a place as any to put my neck on the line...
I think the time has come to stop the personal back handed attacks and insinuations. The only thing it is accomplishing is making us look bad. Right now on this blog we're going through a period where there's very little constructive dialogue going on. Comments are starting to become rude and unprofessional. The flaming and the calling-out of individuals or groups of people is counterproductive to the task at hand and it is getting us nowhere. My suggestion is that if you don't have anything constructive to say then maybe you should keep it off board. This blog was established for the open exchange of ideas, concepts, opinions (agreeing and disagreeing), news and useful information as it relates to the impending reorganization. Please, let's keep it on-point and professional. Remember, the entire UWG community is watching us and they all have long memories.
-Mike Pearson
It is obvious this reorganization has caused a lot of frayed nerves and an abundance of emotions.
Will mentioned the importance of a person's job but I couldn't quite remember the quote. I searched online and found the following:
'Studies have shown that the loss of a job is the third most traumatic event in a lifetime, after death of a loved one and divorce.'
Although we've been assured that none of us will lose our jobs, many of us do not know what to expect. This uncertainty is very similar to impending layoffs causing the same traumatic stress.
Sudden news of the reorganization with its impending implementation turned into quiet periods of no information. I hope something, however small, can be posted more often to help quiet the nerves of those this affects and keep us all abreast of whatever is happening. No news at all seems so much more ominous.
Lets remember that emotions during these stressful times are not always logical, nor are they always rational. Without a doubt, they are understandable!
I have the feeling that the majority of us still don't know much more than we did when this reorganization was announced. We know that we are going to be reorganized, and we now have a structure, but many of us still don't know where we will fall in that structure.
I'm just curious to know when that information will be made available. The implementation date is not very far away.
I understand that it takes a lot of work to get to the point of deciding where people will be placed, but that should have been taken into account when such an aggressive schedule was adopted for this reorganization.
We keep being told that we are now on the clock and not the calendar, but it seems like this keeps dragging out with nothing of much substance being posted.
Has a process been created to determine where people will be placed? Will it be an open process, or will we just be told where to go?
These were some thoughts I had about the meeting in the RCOB. I had mentioned a system based on the three levels of government in the US might have potential, since its design is at least supposed to allow for a federal control over services/resources that affect everyone, but allow local control for services that are only local in their effects.
In a "federated" system, there would be centralized control over services that involve security, physical networks, WebCT, any campus-wide services like webserving, email, payroll, or anything that contains sensitive student-related data etc. This is similar to what the federal government provides...national security and national infrastructure.
The next level down would be akin to states, except this part of the IT system would handle things like budgeting, purchasing, software licensing, etc.
Finally, you would have the local portion, which would contain support services for the different divisions across campus. These folks would provide the hardware and software support and would be subject to their local constituents preferences and priorities related to support.
I don't feel I can directly answer the questions Will raised about the primary and secondary reporting lines working together, articulation agreements and other stuff...I am actually not 100% sure what these things are :)...so, I'll have to read up on this stuff.
As far as conflict resolution is concerned...there are different kinds of conflict...some more serious than others. When it comes to security issues, we probably need a supreme IT commander with the ultimate power to dictate a resolution. For service-related conflicts we might want something more local in nature...this also allows each division/college/school on campus to buy the amount or the kind of service they want...however, this doesn't mean they can opt out of services related to the federal or state level.
Above is a start on the responsibilities assigned to each group, however, like in our government, those responsibilities are always in flux, hence terms like "unfunded mandates" and "fiscal federalism." Keep in mind that this was just a suggestion to be thunk at. It was made off the cuff in the RCOB meeting, but I figured it needed a bit of fleshing out just for the sake of a good discussion.
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