Customers as Partners in the Information Technology Planning Process Copyright CAUSE 1994. This paper was presented at the 1994 CAUSE Annual Conference held in Orlando, FL, November 29- December 2, 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 resources 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; 303-449-4430; e-mail info@cause.colorado.edu CUSTOMERS AS PARTNERS IN THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PLANNING PROCESS Linda Jorn Roberta Armstrong Charlene Mason Don Riley UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA Minneapolis, Minnesota Abstract: The Information Technology Planning Project at the University of Minnesota included a large-scale customer needs assessment. This presentation provides background on the Project and highlights how customers were involved in planning. Techniques included a Customer Council, focus groups that concentrated on particular customer roles (e.g., administrative, research), a customer survey which collected information on technology use and priorities for information technology initiatives, and a series of visionary "think tank" sessions which brought industry and higher education leaders to campus. We discuss project findings, note comparisons between customers and information technology providers, and outline impact of the project on the University. WHY DO A STRATEGIC INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PLANNING PROJECT? "All too often, computing plans are focused on technology itself, rather than on how technology enables faculty and students to achieve some of the key instructional or research goals of the institution. If it is to have a strong chance of succeeding, the plan cannot be distinct from or tangential to the overall academic mission of the university--indeed, the plan must flow from an understanding of the mission..." Hawkins (1989, p. 231) At the University of Minnesota, we realized the need for a strategic information technology plan to guide future planning and investments in information technology and to support the University's mission in teaching, research, and outreach. Both the University and the field of information technology are changing, and changes in both arenas impact future computing and information strategy. To remain a premier institution, the University must have a well-defined information technology strategy that creates an integrated electronic environment with cost-effective decisions about resources. Like other institutions (Breivik, 1994; Fleit, 1994) we wanted to talk with our faculty, staff, and students about their work and how information technology supports what they do. We did not want to conduct a self assessment of information technology services; we wanted to discover the needs of customers and how information technology supported these needs now and in the future. Therefore we embarked on a strategic information technology planning project that allowed us to obtain in-depth, qualitative and quantitative information on customer needs. Originally we envisioned an ambitious five-step process: review University strategic direction, assess customer needs, assess the existing information technology investments already made by the providers of information technology, develop strategic information technology architecture, and develop tactical implementation plans. In this paper we will mainly discuss the one-year process for assessing customer needs, but also will describe how we engaged information technology providers in this process. In addition, we will present our findings and discuss the project's impact on the University. HISTORY The process for defining an information technology strategy for the University of Minnesota community began in 1992 when senior University management created an Advisory Users Committee (AUC), with a charge to create a vision of computing and information technology for the University. The AUC vision states: "We envision an electronic environment, a common space, that invites members of the University community to make use of distributed information technology in realizing our land- grant mission. In addition we wish to involve members of the community at large in this collaboration. This environment will be tolerant of diverse computing platforms, provide access to global information resources, and will value innovation." (August 12, 1992) The vision along with some preliminary strategies for achieving it received endorsement from the University President's Cabinet, the University Senate Committee on Computing and Information Systems, and the University Senate. The vision was widely shared with academic units and key University information technology personnel. To implement the vision, senior management chartered an Information Technology (InfoTech) Steering Committee, which recommended an approach focused on establishing the linkage between the University's strategic requirements and its ability to use information technology and to address the needs of academic and administrative units. The Steering Committee consisted of the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Associate Vice President for Finance and Operations, the Director of Administrative Information Services, a former chair of the Senate Committee on Computing and Information Services, and the two co-chairs of the InfoTech Planning Team. The Steering Committee then chartered the InfoTech Planning Team consisting of people from academic and administrative computing, student affairs, university networking, libraries, graduate school, and collegiate unit instructional computing. To begin the project, we conducted an internal and external environmental scan: internally by reviewing University strategic planning efforts and previous information technology planning documents, and externally through review of peer strategic plans. At about the same time the information technology planning process was beginning, the University of Minnesota was starting to transform its vision, "University 2000 (U2000): A Road Map to the 21st Century," into plans and reality. The U2000 vision describes a University committed to improving its position as one of the world's premier research universities, improving the environment for teaching and learning, enhancing its commitment to service and outreach, providing a user-friendly environment, and expanding its commitment to diversity. The University is developing and using criteria for measuring its success in meeting these objectives. We reviewed U2000 planning documents, kept informed, and shared information with the U2000 planning committee throughout the project. The team also reviewed 11 previous information technology planning efforts at the University of Minnesota and created a "Common Themes" report that highlighted issues that occurred in more than one report. Among these common themes were needs in the following areas: goals and vision, an appropriate organization to support information technology, integrated planning, appropriate funding models, better use of human resources, information technology standards, infrastructure support, user support, better access to institutional data, and applications to support the mission. We also conducted a thorough review of peer strategic plans. The team reviewed profiles of strategic directions, innovative projects, organization structure, and funding models from other universities by looking at publications from such resources as EDUCOM, CAUSE Information Resources Library, Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), Corporation for Research & Educational Networking (CREN), CICNet, MRNet, HECB Telecommunication Council, and the METNET telecommunications consortium. We continued to track developments in these areas as the project progressed. While conducting this environmental scan, we rarely found detailed information on how data was collected from customers. Early on we decided that it was important to not only obtain information from customers, but to allow customers to engage in conversations and share information with people from multiple disciplines. Therefore, we created a formal project organization and process for collecting customer information to achieve this goal. HOW DID WE INVOLVE CUSTOMERS AS PARTNERS? Customer Input Organization We had three objectives in developing our method of obtaining information from customers and providers: obtain in-depth, qualitative and quantitative information on customerneeds; validate the AUC vision; and promote sharing of information. To help us with this process we formed and worked with a Customer Council, Customer Council Liaison Group, and Provider Council. Three separate Listservs allowed efficient and effective communication with these large and diverse groups about meeting dates, project updates, and change in plans. Customer Council--The Customer Council consisted of 150 individuals nominated by their college dean or chancellor (up to 4 people from each college with a balance of faculty, administrative staff, technical staff, and students) or central administrative department head/director (up to 3 members). Customer Council members were invited to participate in the project through involvement in focus groups, through council meetings, and through filling out a survey. Liaison Group--We created a 15-member Customer Council Liaison Group as a representative subset of the full council. This Liaison Group met with the InfoTech Planning Team to review approaches to gathering data and was heavily involved by providing substantive and constructive feedback on the structure and content of drafts and final drafts of our written reports. Provider Council--We created a 15-member Provider Council from the large central units important in the information technology infrastructure on campus--academic computing, administrative computing, telecommunications, libraries, media resources, and printing and graphics. Providers met to discuss their technology perspective and experiences with information technology at the University of Minnesota, discuss the customer assessment findings, and to fill out a survey. Data Gathering and Information Sharing Techniques After talking with four University of Minnesota national experts on strategic planning, we decided on the following four techniques for reaching our goals of data gathering and information sharing: 1. Focus groups (Customer Council) * obtain qualitative data focused on information technology needs * provide an environment in which people could engage in conversations that would impact their own view of information technology needs (Krueger, 1988) 2. Revision/Feedback sessions (Liaison Group) * provide feedback on data gathering and information sharing techniques * provide substantive feedback on drafts of reports 3. Survey (Customer and Provider Council) * provide quantitative information on customer use of information technology * provide a prioritization of possible "next step" actions the University could take to meet information technology needs 4. Monthly Council meetings(Customer and Provider Councils) * share preliminary and final data analysis and progress of strategic planning efforts * provide "visionary think tank" sessions. We invited leaders from industry and higher education to campus, including speakers from DEC, IBM, Apple, US WEST, Silicon Graphics, the Blacksburg Electronic Village project, and the Universities of Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan * share information and develop future collaborative partnerships Early in our process it became clear that many people had difficulty envisioning how they would be working and using technology in five years. Many were caught up in day-to-day tasks of using the information technology already on their desktops, finding money to upgrade hardware/software, or hiring research assistants. Therefore we decided to schedule the think tank sessions in order to stimulate visionary ideas among the council members. These meetings also allowed people from multiple disciplines to meet, listen to and discuss new ideas, and share information. FOCUS GROUPS Process We conducted 21 focus groups from August through October, 1993. Ninety eight people attended the focus groups (some attended several). An outside consultant with skills in strategic planning and focus group facilitation moderated the focus groups; InfoTech Planning Team members served as assistant moderators. Participants self selected into the following functional roles and corresponding focus groups: administrative (49 participants), instructional (18), outreach (17), research (16), and student (19). A pilot focus group was conducted to refine our procedures and questions. Focus group participants completed a pre-focus group survey, which requested that they read the AUC Vision and begin thinking about their information technology needs. The focus group questions asked about their current work environment and information technology use, future requirements, exciting information technology projects, and their reaction to the AUC vision statement. During the focus groups, assistant moderators took notes and tape recorded the session. After each focus group, the assistant moderators collected completed pre-focus group surveys (68 total). Through re-listening to the tapes and reviewing their notes, they created organized notes for each session, which maintained confidentiality in participants' responses and included information from the pre-focus group surveys. The consultant reviewed and provided feedback on all organized notes. One team member then took the organized notes from a functional area (e.g., administrative, instruction, outreach, research, or student) and created the report for that area, incorporating feedback from the consultant, InfoTech Planning Team members, and Customer Council Liaison Group members. Reports As stated above, we created five functional reports that provided _detailed_ information about administrative, instructional, outreach, research, and student needs. The reports had three parts: * specific examples of information technology use * comments on what is working and not working in terms of information technology * key information technology challenges and next steps the University should take in order to meet customer work needs We also created an overall summary report from the focus groups, _Summary of Focus Group Findings_. The purpose of this report was to highlight common findings between all functional groups and to present our recommendations for future information technology planning. Finally, we created an 11-page list of exciting information technology projects in which customers are involved at the University of Minnesota. In addition to the name of the department related to the project, this list included a brief description of the innovative use of technology for administrative, instructional, outreach, research, or student use. SURVEY Process A survey on customer use of information technology and prioritization of possible "next step" actions for the University was conducted in late January and early February of 1994. Response rates were 67% for the Customer Council (96 surveys) and 77% for the Provider Council (10 surveys). The InfoTech Planning Project Team worked with many groups to develop this survey. Customer Council members assisted in developing the items on proposed next steps through participation in small groups at a Customer Council meeting; groups were assigned the task of listing and prioritizing the things the University should do to better support information technology. From these lists, review of other survey instruments, review of focus group suggestions for next steps, extensive discussion with the project team and Steering Committee, and input from information technology experts at the University, the survey was refined. In the survey, respondents were asked about their use of information technology and then asked to rate a variety of actions the University could take to improve information technology usage. We grouped these actions into three broad categories: (1) General Services (including Information Technology Infrastructure, Labs and Facilities, and Consulting Support); (2) Specific needs/activities, and (3) Policy & Planning (Information Technology Policy Development, Funding, and Vision & Planning). The picture of our customers that emerged was that of a group with primarily administrative duties (51% of the sample), although half of the sample also reported either primary or secondary job duties in instruction or instructional support, outreach, or research or research support. Relatively few of the group (about 5%) reported that being a student was their primary role. The group was almost evenly split between men and women, and most of the group (78%) ranged in age from 30 to 49. Reports We created a report, _Findings from the Information Technology Customer Survey_, from the survey results. This report provides a: * Description of how customers use technology (e.g., hardware, software, networking needs) * Prioritization of possible "next step" actions the University could take to meet information technology needs * Discussion on agreement between providers and customers on the priority of next steps WHAT DID WE CONCLUDE FROM THE CUSTOMER ASSESSMENT? Detailed accounts of our findings can be obtained by asking for our reports from the CAUSE Information Resources Library (see Bibliography for titles). Below, we briefly describe major highlights from our focus group and survey findings. Focus Group Findings In the _Summary of Focus Group Findings_ report we provided the President's Cabinet, deans and unit managers with an executive summary highlighting five major findings from all focus groups: 1. Information technology supports a wide range of user activities and extends throughout the University community. Participants provided many examples demonstrating how information technology assists in their activities, and helps them reach local, state, national, and global communities. Participants emphasized that information technology is pervasive and provides opportunities to build new relationships. Participants stressed that without information technology they literally could not do most of their work and that it is technology that gives them a competitive edge. Participants stated that information technology supports the daily functions of communicating, collaborating, writing, visualizing, and working with information, all of which facilitate the creation, sharing, and preservation of knowledge. Participants made it clear that their use of information technology requires a continuum of information technology based on the context of use. 2. Participants described common attributes needed in order for them to be productive in their work environment and provide the foundation for future information technology planning. Participants want information technology systems and services that are: accessible, user focused, accountable, reliable, timely, easy to use, flexible, and accurate. 3. Participants discussed five key information technology challenges the University needs to address so that people can be successful in their work: * Assess and address the information technology _support_ we need. * Develop _environments_ that allow us to efficiently and effectively use information technology to conduct daily functions that support key University activities. * Develop appropriate _policies_ to meet our information technology needs. * Develop _funding models_ to meet our information technology needs. * Develop an appropriate _organizational structure_ to meet our information technology needs. In addition to key challenges, participants provided many examples of specific next steps that administrators, providers, supporters, and users of information technology could implement in order to meet key information technology challenges. We shared these next steps with University providers of information technology for their planning use. 4. In general, users supported the AUC vision and major objectives. Participants viewed information technology planning as important and wanted it to continue. 5. Participants discussed in degrees of detail current exciting projects that administrators, instructors, outreach personnel, researchers, and students are implementing. We published this list on the University of Minnesota Gopher. Survey Findings The survey provided us with a rich amount of data indicating that customers and providers of technology considered most "next step" items important. We choose two key questions to examine to summarize the data in a useful way for management and central administration: * Which items do customers and providers consider to be top priority? * Do customers and information technology providers agree on the priority of next steps? Which items do customers and providers consider to be top priority? Table 1 below lists the top four items for customers and providers and each item's average rating. It is interesting to note that all but one of these items are policy and planning items. One item refers to general services, specifically consulting and support. Customers and providers seem to value policy and planning efforts. Both customers and providers want the need for information technology at the University promoted to the legislature. They also agree that we need more funding for developing the people resources that support and use information technology. =========================================================== Table 1. Top four items for customers and providers Based on average rating (Top priority, do now (4), Valuable, do soon (3), Useful, but not critical (2), and Not necessary (1) CUSTOMER AND PROVIDER "TOP 4": 1. Promote the need for information technology at the University to the legislature.(Customer = 3.7, Provider = 3.9) 2. Provide more funding for developing the people resources that support and use information technology. (Customer = 3.5, Provider = 3.7) CUSTOMER "TOP 4": 1. Provide a place for information technology planning in U2000 and ongoing strategic planning efforts throughout the University. (Customer = 3.6, Provider = 3.6) 2. Ensure disaster prevention/recovery plans for centrally- provided information and services are in place. (Customer = 3.5, Provider = 3.1) PROVIDER "TOP 4": 1. Reorganize information technology units under strong leadership.(Customer = 3.1, Provider = 4.0) 2. Provide more help line/help desk service to adequately cover times of peak demand. (Customer = 3.4, Provider = 3.7) =========================================================== Do customers and information technology providers agree on the priority of next steps? Overall, we concluded that the providers do have a good sense of what their customers need. Despite the overall agreement among customers and providers, there were a few items whose average ratings differed by .4 or more, which suggest areas where customers and providers may differ or may need to educate one another. These are shown in the Table 2 below; items where the difference was statistically significant are marked by **. Only four of these items had a 3.3 or above rating by either the customers or providers, and of these four only two had a significantly different rating. Customers feel more strongly about the need to ensure disaster prevention/recovery plans for centrally-provided information and services, and providers feel more strongly about the need to reorganize information technology units under strong leadership. Both of these items need to be addressed. In all cases, customers and providers need to articulate why these needs are top priority. =========================================================== Table 2. Customer and Provider response differences (.4 or more) Based on average rating (Top priority, do now (4), Valuable, do soon (3), Useful, but not critical (2), and Not necessary (1) INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE: 1. Strengthen campus network security (e.g., break-ins, forgery, eavesdropping). (Customer = 2.9, Provider = 3.3) 2. Ensure disaster prevention/recovery plans for centrally- provided information and services are in place.** (Customer = 3.5, Provider = 3.1) 3. Provide services and support that will facilitate disaster prevention/recovery planning in individual units.**(Customer = 3.1, Provider = 2.6) CONSULTING AND SUPPORT: 1. Expand help desk/help line coverage to include evenings and weekends.(Customer = 2.8, Provider = 3.3) 2. Provide basic information technology training as a part of staff orientation and freshman core curriculum. (Customer = 3.1, Provider = 2.7) 3. Improve support for user selection of hardware and software (e.g., clarifying requirements, documentation, consultation).(Customer = 2.8, Provider = 3.2) 4. Broaden expertise of support staff to include high performance workstations.(Customer = 2.7, Provider = 3.1) 5. Broaden expertise of support staff to include adaptive technology (e.g., Braille output, voice synthesizers). (Customer = 2.4, Provider = 2.9) SPECIFIC NEEDS AND ACTIVITIES: 1. Provide more extensive on-line hours for major administrative systems (e.g., student records, LUMINA). **(Customer = 3.0, Provider = 2.4) INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY POLICY DEVELOPMENT: 2. Reorganize information technology units under strong leadership.**(Customer = 3.1, Provider = 4.0) WHAT IMPACT DID THE PROJECT HAVE ON THE UNIVERSITY? While it is not always possible to clearly identify outcomes from the project, we believe that the project's work and the relationships that it has fostered have been instrumental in a variety of areas. 1. Impact on University 2000 strategic planning. During the planning project we shared preliminary findings and project progress with the U2000 University-wide planning team. Final project reports were distributed to all deans, along with other U2000 strategic planning documents, as part of collegiate planning instructions. We presented our findings to the Deans' Council and discussed the InfoTech strategic planning effort needed to ensure customers have access to the information technology they need in order to be leaders. 2. Providing impetus for ongoing information technology planning. Several on-going commitments resulted from the Project. The senior vice presidents have agreed to focus information technology planning. Our Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs has established an ongoing staff position for Information Technology policy development, planning, measurement, and evaluation. An Information Technology Advisory Council and ongoing Customer Council, along with cross functional working groups, will support the planning efforts. 3. Impact on budget planning. Project data were used in three of the four major themes in a request to the legislature for additional funding. And information technology is prominently featured in the biennial request submitted in October, 1994. 4. Creation of new relationships and cross functional collaboration. An added benefit was the collaboration among team members, Customer Council, and Provider Council. We viewed many episodes of business card swapping and heard people share ideas about pedagogical practices, hardware tips, software advice, multimedia classroom access on campus, and new administrative processes and policies. 5. Prototype multimedia projects. Students in a Rhetoric Multimedia Document Design course had the opportunity to develop three- to five-minute multimedia presentations highlighting six of the exciting information technology projects discussed during focus groups. Students in this course targeted the President of the University of Minnesota as their main audience. They were asked to develop short presentations that the President could use to highlight how information technology, as demonstrated by these exciting projects, is helping the University accomplist its missions of teaching and learning, research and discovery, and outreach and service. The students interviewed the faculty and designed and developed the multimedia presentation. This proved to be a stimulating learning experience for students: they engaged in active learning; worked in groups; interacted with a "real" audience, someone besides the instructor; learned multimedia computer skills; considered multimedia design issues; and presented their final projects to high- level University administrators. 6. Digital Media Center. A new Digital Media Center, which will provide technical and design support for faculty and staff using multimedia for teaching, research, and outreach, will open in early 1995. Specific goals include providing central staff and services to help faculty and teaching assistants bring multimedia technology to the classroom, serving as an umbrella organization for research, investigating how new technology enhances teaching/learning, and providing state leadership for "train the trainer" programs. BIBLIOGRAPHY Breivak, Patrica, Senn. "Investing Wisely in Information Technology: Asking the Right Questions." CAUSE/EFFECT, Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 1994. "Common Themes in University of Minnesota Information Technology Documents: 1982-1992." InfoTech Planning Project, University of Minnesota, 10 March 1993. [Available through CAUSE Information Resources Library]. Fleit, Linda H. "Self Assessment for Campus Information Technology Services." CAUSE Professional Paper Series, #12, 1994. Hawkins, Brian L. (Ed.). "Organizing and Managing Information Resources on Campus." McKinney, Texas: Academic Computing Publications, 1989, p. 231. "Information Technology Planning Project: Findings from the Information Technology Customer Survey." University of Minnesota, July 1994. [Available through CAUSE Information Resources Library]. "InfoTech Planning Project Customer Needs Assessment: Administrative Summary." University of Minnesota, January 1994. [Available through CAUSE Information Resources Library]. "InfoTech Planning Project Customer Needs Assessment: Instructional Summary." University of Minnesota, January 1994. [Available through CAUSE Information Resources Library]. "InfoTech Planning Project Customer Needs Assessment: Outreach Summary." University of Minnesota, January 1994. [Available through CAUSE Information Resources Library]. "InfoTech Planning Project Customer Needs Assessment: Research Summary." University of Minnesota, January 1994. [Available through CAUSE Information Resources Library]. "InfoTech Planning Project Customer Needs Assessment: Student Summary." University of Minnesota, January 1994. [Available through CAUSE Information Resources Library]. "InfoTech Planning Project Customer Needs Assessment: Summary of Focus Group Findings." University of Minnesota, January 1994. [Available through CAUSE Information Resources Library]. Krueger, Richard A. "Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research." Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, 1988. "Vision and Strategy for Computing and Information Technology." University of Minnesota, 12 August 1992, p. 3. [Available through CAUSE Information Resources Library].