Lots of Data! No Information! (Why Universities and Colleges Do Not Take Full Advantage of Their Information Systems) Copyright CAUSE 1994. This paper was presented at the 1993 CAUSE Annual Conference held in San Diego, California, December 7-10, and is part of the conference proceedings published by CAUSE. 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, that the CAUSE copyright notice and the title and authors of the publication and its date appear, and that notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information technology in higher education. To copy or disseminate otherwise, or to republish in any form, requires written permission from CAUSE. For further information: CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301; 303449-4430; e-mail info@cause.colorado.edu LOTS OF DATA! NO INFORMATION! (Why Universities and Colleges Do Not Take Full Advantage of Their Information Systems) Bethany M. Baxter IBM Academic Consulting and Services Louisville Kentucky Over the past five years, IBM Academic Consulting and Services Group has worked with over 200 colleges and universities to establish strategic plans for academic and administrative information systems. From these studies, a common set of problems has emerged. Most schools originally automated paper systems without making the necessary changes to take full advantage of their investment. The primary reason that these changes did not and do not occur is an unresolved power/authority struggle. Most often, the authority to automate is delegated to director(s) of information systems, yet power to change the approach to tasks resides with administrators whose knowledge of technology varies. Furthermore, many essential changes require collaborative efforts across work groups unaccustomed to collaborating. This paper will examine three key changes which need to occur for schools to fully utilize their information systems. These include changes in: organizational structure; resource allocation; and approaches to academic and administrative tasks. LOTS OF DATA! NO INFORMATION! (Why Universities and Colleges Do Not Take Full Advantage of Their Information Systems) During the past five years, IBM's Academic Consulting and Services Group has worked with over 200 colleges and universities to establish strategic plans for information systems. Interviews have been conducted with over 20,000 faculty, staff, administrators and students, and over 100,000 faculty, staff, administrators, and students have responded to questionnaires. As a result of these studies a common set of problems has been identified across all types of schools, regardless of size, orientation, and mission. The key to these problems is the fact that initially most schools simply automated their paper systems without making appropriate changes to take full advantage of the investment they made in information systems. In fact, if schools purchased administrative systems they frequently modified these newly-acquired information systems in order to match their paper systems, thereby reducing the efficiency already present in the purchased systems. Our studies have indicated that the primary reason appropriate changes were not and are not made is an unresolved power/authority struggle. On most campuses, the authority to implement information systems has been clearly delegated to the director(s) of those systems. However, the power to change the approach to tasks has remained with the departmental administrators whose knowledge of information systems varies from campus to campus. In fact, the experience of the Consulting and Services Group suggests that administrators' attitudes toward information systems are a far better indicator of the efficiencies to be gained by the implementation of such systems than are the skill sets of the computing center directors. Furthermore, many of the changes that need to occur require collaborative efforts across work groups that are not used to collaborating. There are three key areas in which changes need to occur. These are changes in organizational structure, changes in the allocation of resources, and changes in approaches to tasks, including both the administrative tasks of handling data and the academic tasks of teaching, research/scholarly activity, and service. This paper will examine each of these areas. Organizational Structures Even though automation has significantly changed job responsibilities, on many campuses reporting structures have remained unchanged. As a result, multiple officers frequently manage information systems at various levels, and multiple offices may be charged with similar tasks. For example, it is not uncommon to find a satellite dish funded by an engineering college, the cabling from it the responsibility of Telecommunications, the storage and delivery of taped material under the auspices of the library, the facility for uplinking programs through the satellite in Continuing or Distance Education and the development of video materials in the Drama Department. Multiple groups may be wiring campuses for academic networks, administrative networks, television, security, telephone, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and facilities management. Similarly, the committees which are in place to accomplish collaborative tasks may not be designed or charged to address the concerns of today's technological world. Such committees include long- standing committees and more recently appointed technology advisory committees. For example, the Director of Telecommunications may not be a permanent members of the Physical Facilities Committee, and the Director of Information Systems may not be a member of the Strategic Planning Committee. With increasing frequency, changes on campuses require information resources. Unless directors of systems are included in the initial stages of planning, both the costs of the technology required and the efficiencies to be gained by using technology are not identified. Furthermore, some strategic planning time cycles do not identify the service orientation of information systems providers. It is not uncommon for such offices to be required to submit yearly plans at the same time as the plans of other departments on campus, before they know what will be required of them. On the other hand, newly appointed technology advisory groups may not be appropriately representative of the applications or the users on campus. Too often the criteria used to select members of these committees is technological knowledge and skill. This approach often results in advisory committees who advise on technology only. Such committees often become deadlocked over issues such as "UNIX versus VM or VMS" or "fiber versus ATM." Meanwhile, other important issues, such as the prioritization of projects, standardization of tools, and cross-discipline sharing of resources, remain unaddressed. Users in these environments have no identifiable representation and may become frustrated. Frustrated users may attempt to meet their own needs by installing their own "shadow" systems. Ultimately, this approach may result in the degradation of the integrity of the data on the entire campus as individual units begin to rely on their own databases with a resulting disregard for the accuracy of the central system. Finally, there are committees that are not established on many campuses. For example, the current trend for faculty, staff and students to use their campus identification cards as Smart Cards, Debit Cards and for electronic building access, automated library check out, and other functions has resulted in many groups planning for the use of these cards with little sharing of information between the groups involved. Resource Allocation At this time, as funding is being reduced for many colleges and universities, improving the efficiency of operations is critical. In many areas a great deal of efficiency can be gained by having well trained personnel use appropriate technology. However, the criteria for the distribution of resources and the training of personnel are often based on premises that are no longer relevant. This is particularly true in state universities, although this problem is prevalent on many other campuses. On many campuses, requirements for positions and criteria for promotion and salary increases do not reflect the skills needed in today's world. In many institutions, job descriptions of support staff still require typing rather than word processing. Similarly, programmers are often only rewarded for longevity or for promotion to management positions rather than for the acquisition of needed new skills. Regulations regarding the acquisition of equipment are similarly flawed. In many states and on many campuses, capital and operational expenses remain separate, and the ability to purchase equipment to offset the need to hire additional staff or to replace staff is very difficult. In fact, the purchase of equipment is often more easily linked to the renovation or construction of a building than to efficiencies that could be gained in operations. Furthermore, many procurement manuals are unclear about which purchasing categories address certain new elements of technology, such as network design, and purchasing departments may make determinations that complicate the procurement process. There are also many areas which are not addressed in current financial structures. Equipment procurement is usually seen as cyclical rather than ongoing. Therefore, there are frequently no funds available for maintenance and upgrade of acquired equipment. Similarly, the predetermined length of time that equipment must be kept before it can be replaced may not reflect the rapid advances of technology. Even without cumbersome regulations, many universities and colleges have separated hardware and software in the procurement process. In effect, they have separated applications from equipment. It is not uncommon to find universities where hardware is provided by the department and software is provided by the university or vice versa. Such separation makes the process of prioritizing less meaningful and precludes the sharing of resources across functional groups. This approach may result in unexpected demands on central resources or the proliferation of underutilized departmental equipment. Underlying the formal procurement policies, most members of institutions have a preconceived notion, based on experience, of how much resource a given area can request at a given time, whether the request is for programmer's time or for equipment. Therefore, many requests are curtailed to meet the perceived "appropriate" profile. Equipment may be purchased, even though the purchaser knows that it has a short life span, because the price falls within the perceived resource niche. Similarly, requests for services are frequently presented piecemeal so that the requester does not appear to be asking for more resource than (s)he should at a given time. This makes it difficult to understand the real needs of the campus and to address them efficiently. Approaches to Tasks Reorganization, new procurement policies, and well trained personnel will not produce the efficiency desired unless universities and colleges change the way they operate. They must look at the way they administer, teach, produce research and provide service to the community in the light of new technology available. Instead, as areas are automated, strong emphasis is often placed on automating all processes exactly as they are carried out manually. The most common defense against changing is, "We are unique!" Homegrown software has been shown to be as much as four times as expensive as purchasing off- the-shelf administrative packages, but many universities believe that their uniqueness demands this approach. These systems are often designed as separate files that matched the file cabinets in other times. The collectors of data are still seen, not only as the owners of the data, but also as the determiners of what should be collected, how data is stored, who has the ability to access the data, and in what form access may occur. Such narrow definitions may severely limit the ability of faculty, staff and administrators to use data effectively. As industry moves to business process reengineering, it is imperative that universities also look at the processes they use to accomplish their administrative tasks, identify steps that can be eliminated, and automate steps that can be automated. However, the leadership in many areas does not have the necessary understanding of what technology can accomplished to utilize it well. The responses to a survey used by the consulting group in a broad range of colleges and universities consistently show that 60% to 80% of the faculty and 30% to 34% of the support staff have computers at home. However, administrators with computers in their homes vary from 20% to 80% on any given campus. Our experience has shown that this particular statistic is a good indicator of the approaches to change that are occurring in administrative areas. The presence of a computer in the home seems to lift it from the status of "glorified typewriter" to tool, regardless of who in the home uses it. Where a computer is seen as a tool, administrators try to identify areas where it can be useful and provide leadership for the reengineering process. On the other hand, if the computer is seen as a "glorified typewriter," there are concerns about who should have one and who should be trained. "Will middle management be doing secretarial tasks if they have a computer?" is a frequently asked question in such environments. The need for information from administrative systems is a frequent concern of those in academic areas. They particularly desire information that will assist them in advising students and managing budgets. Yet, in too many institutions, pertinent administrative information is not shared because of security concerns or interpretations of the Buckley Amendment. As a result, students may be placed in failure situations, spend extra time and dollars to receive a degree, or have their health needs unidentified in an emergency. Deans and chairs may struggle to manage their resources with limited information. Ultimately, such attitudes may further increase the development of "shadow" systems and further erode the integrity of the institutional data. Using technology for teaching is too often seen as training students to use computers. To accomplish this, most colleges and universities have developed some "computer literacy" criteria that a student must complete before graduation. The relevance of this criteria to the needs of the workplace or to the needs of the educational institution is often not regularly reevaluated. There is also little recognition in these requirements of the experiences many traditional students are now having in K-12 or that nontraditional students have had in the workplace. Requiring literacy requirements to be fulfilled before graduation means that faculty cannot assume that students have any skills during their time on campus. This keeps many faculty from utilizing many beneficial educational tools. Support for researchers also varies from campus to campus. Campuses that centrally provide information about funding that is available, identify research interests of other faculty, provide access to appropriate databases, and provide a broad variety of statistical tools have often seen an increase in scarce research dollars. However, in many schools, support for research still occurs on a departmental or individual basis. Conclusion In conclusion, although the actions needed to solve these problems vary from campus to campus, most of the solutions must be based on collaborative efforts of those who do not have a history of collaborating. Such efforts must include the collaboration of collectors of data with each other and the users, the collaboration of faculty to determine curriculum that meets the needs of the student as a learner today and as a member of the work force tomorrow, the collaboration of researchers to identify and share scarce resources, and the collaboration of the providers of information systems to provide the most cost effective approach to technology.