An Opportunity for Fundamental, Systemic Change Copyright 1991 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 1991. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its dateappear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301, 303-449-4430, e-mail info@CAUSE.colorado.edu AN OPPORTUNITY FOR FUNDAMENTAL, SYSTEMATIC CHANGE by Carole A. Barone ************************************************************************ Carole Barone is Vice President for Information Systems and Computing at Syracuse University. She currently serves as Chair of the CAUSE Board of Directors. ************************************************************************ Existing financial difficulties on some college and university campuses have now been exacerbated by enrollment downturns. Some institutions were forced to impose cuts in excess of 10 percent as they prepared their budgets last spring for this fiscal year. Still others recently announced unplanned cuts that have become effective immediately. Those of us who must now deal with these leaner conditions have two options: one is to prune around the edges and hope that things will get better quickly, and the other is to seize the opportunity presented by these circumstances to make fundamental, systemic change quickly. The former approach drags down morale. Constant pruning to contain costs is debilitating to an organization; it saps its energy. The basis of the latter strategy is the conviction that budget cuts should create conditions that result in fundamental changes in the way we deliver services, but not in any substantive diminution of the quality of those services. Indeed, as Richard L. Nolan has articulated so effectively, only by changing the way we deliver services will we be able to avoid reduction in their quality.[1] Our very difficulties could provide the means to change the organizational paradigm that frustrates our ability to use information technology to permit our institutions to function successfully under new constraints. Financial exigencies have produced a climate on our campuses that is more amenable than usual to change. This is an opportunity to get the attention of deans and administrators and to enlist their cooperation in doing something radical instead of merely incremental. We are all aware of the enabling capacities of information technology. These times challenge our creativity to devise ways to use information technology to change the way we relate to students and to each other within our colleges and universities. In a CAUSE/EFFECT article published last summer, John Southard calls it a "technological sin ... to fail to use the opportunity to use technology to change or update the way we think, work, or do business."[2] It is possible--and healthy--to view the technological means by which we accomplish our work in new ways. We have the opportunity, in changing the way we "do business," not only to work toward containing costs but also to create an environment that can help attract and retain students by enhancing the experience they have on our campuses. Surveys tell us that students are reacting negatively to those manifestations of the size and complexity of some larger institutions that they feel strip them of their identity as individuals. In many respects computing systems and administrative procedures, including the way we deliver and support academic computing, reinforce those perceptions. We need to take a hard look at those systems and procedures, in terms of both their costliness and effectiveness. Centrally-based systems The volume of processing on some administrative mainframes has been growing at an annual rate of 30 percent. This growth is largely attributable to new mainframe applications and the use of database technology. Many institutions use information technology very effectively to automate their administrative systems and to produce a varied and robust networked information technology environment for their students and faculty. Although the use of microcomputers is growing, most larger institutions still have systems and procedures that are largely centrally focused and mainframe-based. Since the costs of acquiring mainframe computers escalate with the increasingly greater capacity required to support large, data-intensive, online administrative systems designed to be housed on a central mainframe, we must begin to develop strategies that strongly encourage applications of information technology that minimize the use of on- campus mainframe computers. If we cannot afford to fund the continued expansion of mainframe capacity, then we have to stop implementing new mainframe applications and focus our efforts on decentralized and distributed computing. Besides their increasing costliness, centrally-based systems also have some disadvantages when it comes to dealing with students. Centrally-based administrative support systems must necessarily emphasize the processing of students and paper in order to avoid the major inconveniences and chaos that result when the process is not appropriately designed and contingency plans are not in place. (Many of us have had an unforgettable experience through which we have learned this lesson.) However, there are pitfalls associated with focusing on process instead of on people. Centrally-based processes, even when they are well designed and efficient, graphically emphasize the negative aspects of size because they move students away from the administrative unit with which they are familiar. The stress associated with the student's need to accomplish an academic task is exacerbated by the necessity of traveling from the familiar setting of the academic department or college office to a central office to deal with strangers who are not always acquainted with the subtleties of specific academic programs. Other examples of systems, procedures, and policies magnifying the impression of size include overly centralized processing procedures: admissions applications or student schedule adjustments (particularly those in which no value is added to the data at the processing point); the unwillingness or inability to release data stored on centrally maintained databases to academic and administrative units; unnecessary centralized control over alumni and development databases; and registration systems that assume the character of a free-for-all. Opportunities for change Each of these examples highlights the need to simplify and decentralize policies, procedures, systems, and organizational structures. A few years ago we would have been hard pressed to find the solution to the dilemma we face. However, information technology now offers the technical capacity to move applications (or parts of them) from central mainframes to functional units, such as the schools and colleges or even the student's residence hall room. Touch-tone add/drop systems, for example, permit students to add or drop a course from any telephone. Some schools allow students to access and update parts of their student records from terminals and microcomputers around campus and in the residence halls. Moreover, microcomputers now have the power and the software to enable units to analyze data and to program unit- based applications. Cornell University's Project Mandarin will create user-friendly interfaces to mainframe data, thus making those data more readily accessible to more people. An initiative undertaken this past year at Syracuse University is an example of how units working together as a team are able to use the new capabilities of distributed processing to permit a functional unit to manage its own data (not to mention control its own destiny). Enrollment in the college of nursing had been falling precipitously over the past several years. Last year the dean gained authorization from the dean of admissions to interact with the applicant pool in some new and independent ways. With the assistance of several units from the information systems and computing division, the college worked with downloaded databases to manage its applicant pool in a far more personal way than would have been possible using the centrally-based and -managed undergraduate admissions system. This fall, in contrast to the declines in the entering classes of the other schools and colleges, the size of the incoming class in the college of nursing doubled. Sometimes a simple, unit-based solution is more effective and less costly than an elegant, online approach. We have the means to stop overautomating and overcentralizing and to leave more room for human interaction and/or unit-based customization in our systems design. It is time to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the convergence of the need to simplify and decentralize our processes and the need to make some radical changes in the way we do things in order to cut costs and enhance the undergraduate experience. Such a stance will allow us to sustain a progressive posture. We should view this opportunity with enthusiasm; these circumstances create conditions that are receptive to major changes in approach and attitude. If deans and administrators realize that tinkering with traditional processes might slow, but will not alter, the inevitable course of decline, they may become more open to options that hold the promise of transforming the way they work and relate to students. We have strong incentives to implement changes in information technology that will distribute the information technology environment and help create a procedural climate that is more sensitive to the individual. The continued progress of institutions of higher education demands the will to change. The question is: do we have sufficient motivation to make the radical paradigm change needed, or will we behave in our usual incremental and piecemeal manner? ======================================================================== Footnotes 1 Richard L. Nolan, "Too Many Executives Today Just Don't Get It!," CAUSE/EFFECT, Winter 1990, pp. 5-11. 2 John Southard, "What Technology Can Do If We Let It!," CAUSE/EFFECT, Summer 1990, p. 55. ======================================================================== An Opportunity for Fundamental, Systemic Change