Have you noticed lately that the serious questions about the Internet on campus are changing? It wasn't very long ago that campus nets were hacker heaven. Ethernet, FDDI, LAN, WAN, IPng, HTTP - the list goes on. This is hardly polite conversation at the faculty club.
But when Senator Jim Exon of Nebraska showed some very naughty skin pix from the Internet on the floor of the United States Senate, and successfully talked his colleagues into passing the Communications Decency Act, the dialog began to change. It didn't stop with decency. During 1996, a new, worrisome Internet development seemed to appear around every corner. The law enforcement types in government stonewalled a solution to Internet privacy using cryptography. The owners of print, sound and movie copyrights launched a frontal attack on Internet browsing rights. The FCC, egged on by Congressional liberals, proposed a new subsidy tax on universities and other telephone users to pay for the Internet in K-12 schools. Research faculty began complaining about slow response time from the privatized Internet. The governors of Western states started a "virtual" university with its own degrees and accreditation.
It's called growing up. We're not setting the spark on a Model T Internet anymore, we're building the future communications and information system of the planet. A system that will fundamentally alter the societal role of universities, from the substance of degrees to the structure of knowledge.
To cite just one example of new policy challenges, let's take the question of content on and access to university-owned Web servers. Unlike the university library, with its long established rules about who may enter the building and the stacks, a Web site invites the whole world to your electronic doorstep. Also, unlike the university librarian who purchases books within clear guidelines, Web site content has many authors, some of whose intellectual property rights may be infringed on your server. The Web server is connected to the lines of an Internet Service Provider (ISP), many of whose contracts now demand indemnification by the university for any content or access related liabilities. Finally and not least importantly, the value of the Web site to your faculty and students depends materially on the quality of the software and hardware platform on which it is mounted, and the maintenance that the site receives from your computing and networking organization.
An intelligent institutional strategy for realizing the advantages and avoiding the pitfalls of Web servers involves considered inputs from many of the university's faculty and professional specialists, including teaching, research, networking, legal, risk management and government relations. But today, many schools not only have their computing and communications management located beneath too many organizational layers, with inadequate strategic focus, but also tolerate institutional barriers that frustrate the type of integrated decision-making that will be required for success on the Net.
Coping with the Internet, much less anticipating the changes it is making in university life, is a special challenge. As the invasion of network-based computing into all aspects of scholarship continues rapidly, university leaders need to reposition information technology and its management focus. The IT agenda has been shifting upward within the university and will continue to do so. As this happens, the Chief Information Officer role will shift from that of evangelist and technical project manager to that of user guide, executive advisor and policy gatekeeper. The technical management skills that commanded attention a decade ago must now be leavened with vision and creativity. Much of the Net is still uncharted, high-risk high-reward territory. In an era of new competitive forces in higher education, the early rewards will accrue to those whose institutional strategies are founded on agile and adroit seizing of Internet opportunities.
Michael M. Roberts is vice president of Educom. roberts@educom.edu