Changes required by ICT era are painful sometimes

There are 27 universities in the Czech republic. They vary in a wide range of sizes, ages and orientations. The Charles University is the oldest and the largest one. It was established 650 years ago in 1348 and it educates about 30 thousand students in 16 faculties. But there also exist smaller universities that were established recently whilst some of them educate only about one thousand of students. Regardless of the age or size, all these universities face to the new conditions created by a progress of ICT.

All universities have their computer centers at either university or faculty level. The university management expects from the ICT an improved information flow and therefore an improved quality and effectiveness of control of all vital processes with less paperwork. The university teachers expect better support for lectures, a better access to databases, better support of research, better connectivity with the rest of the world. The students have similar expectations. But these high expectations are often in a sharp contrast with a reality. Although extensive financial and labor resources are spent to ICT, the real improvements don�t meet expectations.

We shall mention some typical reasons that are responsible for this undesirable situation and try to discuss a question of how to avoid or minimize their negative influence. Without ambitions for completeness, let us touch the following problems:

• Historical tradition
• Duration of the process with respect to the academic term
• Legibility of typical styles of control
• Relationship to mission critical activities
• Lack of resources
• Inertia
• Resistance to changes
• Fear from order
• Self development vs. external suppliers
• Security and privacy of data
• Education is not just a charging of knowledge
• Motivation of professionals
• Lack of national ICT policy and vision
• Basic preparation of students and teachers

I believe that the our universities can serve as an example and that the similar situation can be generally observed in all universities worldwide with, perhaps, minor differences in a scale and impact of individual factors.

There exist certain historical reasons that gradually led to the present situation in an ICT infrastructure and had their impact at universities. We can discuss this topic from many different viewpoints as implementations of ICT in universities can be viewed and decomposed in many ways and according to many aspects. We can consider ICT as e.g. an academic and an administrative computing, or as a collection of hardware, software and communication facilities, etc. Regardless of the manner of decomposition, the local computer centers were usually involved in majority of ICT activities. Universities had their computer centers already from the mainframe era. These computer centers were originally dedicated to operate the local mainframe and to program and run various small applications that supported some fractions of the university administration. The main habits of university computer center and its staff were settled that time. Since that time there also exist some isolated non-compatible modules of information systems. The modules arose spontaneously and, as a rule, they have the following common features:

• They have a limited scope
• They were usually created without a necessary professional knowledge in developing information systems.
• They don�t communicate to each-other
• They have little or no documentation
• Their maintenance is difficult

These features create an obstacle in a proper use of an ICT in university information systems. We can find similar obstacles of a proper use of an ICT also in other university activities. I will try to make an overview of the main reasons that are responsible for the above-mentioned situation.

The universities are dedicated to conduct a research and an education of students. These are the two mission critical activities of all universities. Seemingly, development and implementation of an ICT does not belong to them. Therefore, iIt is no surprise, therefore, to encounter a certain amount of conservatism among university managers and teachers when they use this fact as an argument in defending and protecting their own priorities to their particular activities. This mainly holds when different activities should compete for resources and people need to advocate their priorities. For them, the shirt is usually closer than the coat.

Such an approach is a short-minded approach and attitude. Although not being a mission critical activity, an ICT can considerably support teaching, research and management, make them more effective and give them an extra power. Neglecting this fact leads to a gradual degradation of the mission critical activities of the university and it results in loosing a ground in competition with other universities. It is necessary to make everybody sure that, in order to keep warm, we need both: the shirt and the coat. This is particularly important for the top university managers.

Implementation of ICT in universities is not an act but it is a long lasting process. This process contains such activities as:

• building a communication and network infrastructure,
• providing users with an adequate hardware and software environment,
• implementing transactional information system for all activities that can take advantage of ICT,
• implementing MIS layers of information systems for different roles of managers,
• organizing computer centers to supply users with a number of services,
• developing multimedia course materials for distance learning,
• organizing high-performance computing for special research tasks,
• organizing training of all categories of users,
• and many others.

It requires a lot of effort to accomplish any of these activities. It also requires a lot of financial resources. It usually also requires from managers to give up a quiet and comfortable life and to replace it by many risks and disturbances. It usually requires enforcing a new style of work, to overcome resistance. All these factors are sacrifices, which will bring a harvest in one day. But this harvest will come after a long time that usually exceeds an academic term.

There are two categories of university managers: academic managers elected for a short term (e.g. rectors and vice-rectors, deans and vice-deans that are typically elected for three years period), and professional managers like a bursar, directors of departments and also a computer center director. Academic managers are mostly responsible for the global and strategic issues while professionals are responsible for operative tasks. And there is an inconsistency between a time impact of decisions of managers and the duration of their term or their responsibility. Why should academic managers bear responsibility for the harvest that will be gathered by somebody else? Why should they face to the discomfort that accompanies an introduction of the new ways of thinking and work?

There is no easy answer to these questions if we don�t want to rely only on the enlightenment and enthusiasm of some people.

One solution seems to be straightforward: responsibility for different categories of tasks should be assigned to different categories of managers according to duration of their terms. The problem is that the hierarchy of professional managers is less legible (and therefore also less recognized) by the academic community (it holds, at least, in the Czech universities and universities with similar historical and cultural tradition). This is why,; the academic community does not identify easily with their decisions.

Recognition and legibility should be gradually shifted from academic towards to professional managers if we want to make the time impact of decisions consistent with duration of responsibility of the managers. But this process is not easy and it might take a long time.

It is not a problem to be generous in condition of wealth. But, unfortunately, this is not the typical situation at universities. The financial resources of universities are limited more and more limited and the universities should struggle for survival sometimes. LLimited financial resources lead to restrictive strategies, which can have an unwanted impact at the process of implementation of the ICT. It would be foolish to unduly spend resources for superfluous ICT components. And there are temptations to do so, sometimes. Our vendors encourage us to buy the latest versions of hardware or software before we learnt to fully use the previous ones. Instead, it will be helpful to prepare several dynamic scenarios, which show the impact of the ICT at the mission critical activities when a certain technology was adopted or was not adopted. These scenarios should contain also financial information showing the cost of individual competing alternatives. This makes it possible to discover the bottlenecks and critical points in the university business strategic plans. Then, it is easier to demonstrate that there is no substitute for the ICT in many current and future university activities. Then, it is easier to approve these costs even in a very tight university budget.

There are many obstacles for implementation of the ICT in universities. Some of them are classical, as are e.g. inertia of behavior of people, their resistance to changes, etc. We shall mention still other obstacle not described in literature. Fear from order is this obstacle. If the ICT should serve properly, it should enforce an order in all folds of the university life. This feature of the ICT is usually considered as its main contribution to improvement of university activities. But people generally don�t like order or they have a fear of it. This attitude has two very different reasons:

The order tends to provide all users with the same opportunity to gain required information. It removes a bad practice when some people had a better access to information than others did. People who loose their advantage of the better access to information have a fear from order. Regrettably, managers sometimes belong to this category.

Implementation of the ICT is followed by more structured ways of work. The regulations might be quite strict. People feel that they become merely controlled by machines and that the human factors of their work are disappearing. People feel that they loose their privacy, their habits, etc. People also feel unsure about the privacy and security of data and information.

Both these reasons for the fear can retard progress at universities and the university managers have to seek for a specific medicine for each of them. While the first reason is rather selfish and it is desirable to get rid of it, the second reason expresses very deep human feelings and this problem should be treated with the greatest care and understanding.

University computer centers consider themselves to be a center of excellence in all issues concerning the ICT. Their long tradition in operation of the ICT and also their contribution to a research in this branch approves a high self-confidence in their capabilities. But the question usually is not the capability but the efficiency of completing different tasks. The computer centers can hardly compete with specialized software houses, not speaking about hardware manufacturers. The question usually is what is easier and cheaper: to use a ready made solution of an external supplier or to develop an own tailor made solution. It is not a loss to admit that we have to share capabilities and resources between self-development of some solutions and their ordering from an external supplier. It is just an understanding of the reality and understanding of the changing role of the university computer centers.

There are also endless discussions whether to organize the work of the computer center in a centralized or a decentralized manner. Both these alternatives have their pros and contras. Centralized approach seems to be generally easier for control and cheaper. But its services are more distant from end users, less matched to the real needs of end users. The end users think that people from the computer center don�t understand and even neglect their requirements. They also feel that they have less control of how financial resources are spent. Decentralized approach has the opposite features. I believe that a compromise between the two above- mentioned extreme alternatives is the suitable solution, reflecting the local conditions. According to the old Chinese saying: "It doesn�t matter if the cat is black or white when it catches mice". The exception to any freedom is the issue of the university standard policy making. Centralized alternative is the only correct option here.

Distance learning is a big challenge to the universities nowadays. Mastery in this issue might become a crossroad between successful and non-successful universities in the near future. Therefore, big amounts are spent for building infrastructure enabling a wide access to the distance learning. This is merely the technical (and financial) aspect of the problem. The other and still more important aspect is a content and a form of the distant education. We can use many multimedia and other tools to prepare a very attractive presentation of any topic. We can pour knowledge into heads of the students by that funnel. This fact can mislead both: teachers and students. This provides universities with an instrument that is capable to charge students with a big volume of data and knowledge. But it is a very dangerous expectation. Universities are the institutions devoted to educate students. But education is not just charging students by knowledge. Education also means teaching to the ways of thinking. Creative thinking, if possible. There is no substitute for the role of teacher, the real living teacher. This should be taken into account when considering the distance learning and its ICT support. Otherwise, the role of the universities will degrade from the centers of excellence and education to the merely training institutions. Training and preparation of the teachers and the students must demonstrate that the computer literacy is not an aim but only a very useful and powerful instrument.

Some universities try to find their specific manner of managing all the tasks brought by the ICT era. Sometimes, this approach reminds a reinventing of a wheel. There are many similarities in the ways of implementing, operating and using the ICT at different universities. Why not to carry this load together? Why not to share problems and seek common solutions? There is a rationale for cooperation in the ICT issues among universities.

CAUSE is evidence and a good example from the USA that cooperation among universities is useful. EUNIS as a younger brother of CAUSE consists of sixteen European national organizations and wants to learn from CAUSE’s experience. Czech national organization EUNIS-CZ also belongs to EUNIS family and it has three main aims:

• Exchange of the ICT expertise and opinions between universities and their parts.

• Formulation of common standpoints and enforcement of common issues in the ICT field.
• Cooperation with ICT vendors and with international organizations.

EUNIS-CZ performs a number of activities to this aim. Let us mention one of these activities that can, as we expect and believe, effectively contribute to meet our objectives. We have established eight "Professional working groups" that focus their attention to the more specific issues of the ICT at universities. These are namely:

• Information systems at universities
• License policy in hardware and software
• Support of teaching in a "virtual university" environment
• New roles of computer centers
• Teaching for computing literacy
• High performance computing
• Networking
• Guidelines for the ICT state policy

These working groups should associate experts from universities and vendors and create informal organizational structures around their chairmen, the recognized authority for the given topic. They should

• organize experience exchange,
• support coordination in cooperation,
• organize links to ICT vendors.
• Last but not least task of working groups is to be an independent partner for Ministry of education in all affairs of the ICT at universities and offer an independent expertise in preparing and evaluating various grant contests.

I believe that this approach will help to a better motivation and identification of ICT professionals at universities. I also believe that this approach can contribute to a gradual building of a national ICT policy and its long-term vision. I am sure that cooperation between universities is the way, which will help us to manage the painful changes required by the ICT era.

Prof. Ing. Ivan Vrana, DrSc.
Czech University of Agriculture in Prague
Kamycka 129,
165 21 Prague 6 - Suchdol
Czech republic
Tel: +4202-2438-4276
E-mail: [email protected]